Conservatives are supposed to blanch at the idea of affirmative action. At very least, orthodoxy requires that they universally oppose programs meant to provide minor advantages to minority groups that are historically disadvantaged. But a bill from Queen of Bad Ideas Jane Cunningham [1] (R- The Land of Make-Believe) currently making its way through the Missouri House proposes to institutionalize affirmative action for conservatives --a group which is not only not disadvantaged, but which controls Missouri state government, the White House and most American commerce and industry.

Cunningham has sponsored "intellectual diversity" legislation [2] which amounts to little more than a plan for Wingnut Welfare within our institutions of higher learning, encouraging colleges and universities to recruit speakers and hire faculty who wouldn't merit the attention otherwise. HB 213 [3] passed from committee after a hearing yesterday...

...testimony at the hearing painted college campuses as liberal "ideological monopolies" where professors are sometimes hostile toward conservative beliefs.

The proposed legislation, sponsored by Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, would encourage universities to become more politically diverse.

Conservative academics --you know, the ones who think we should do nothing about global warming [4] and that there's no such thing as evolution [5]-- just can't seem to get ahead without assistance from Queen Jane. How else will we indoctrinate our young adults into anti-science craziness if we don't force conservative views upon them --force them to watch FoxNews for credit-hours?

Cunningham's legislation is very strange given the doctrinaire stance of her party that all things are best regulated by the free-market. The academic market seems to have spoken and said it isn't buying Ann Coulter or young-earth creationists [6], yet Cunningham is unwilling to accept that market judgment. Hence the legislation to force the hand of Missouri schools. In the end, the project is pure political parochialism, a use of the bully pulpit of the legislature to give a leg up to favored 'academics' whose ideas alone don't stack up to the standards of peer review and acceptance ordinarily required of public intellectuals.

The academy is supposed to be incubator for the expansion of knowledge based on the Enlightenment principles of reason and empiricism. Cunningham's legislation would dilute those principles.

Queen Jane's Wingnut-Welfare affirmative action plan is needless; charlatans, after all, are not a suspect class.