And don’t forget there was that Libertarian strain in Boxford, and I think they looked up to Ayn Rand.

I’m sure there were some of those little Ayn Ryans out there during the beer riots of the late 1990s. Remember the white frat kids who chanted “Rodney King! Rodney King!” when the local constabulary showed up after they tipped over the book-buyback kiosk? Good times, good times. . .

I have mixed feelings about Boxford, but I don’t think Rich Hart is representative of the faculty. The article is a bit skewed. A lot of the faculty is progressive — and we had a lively group of Professors for Peace right in the middle of the initial Afghanistan bombing. I always thought the university, even upper administration, liked to expose the students to liberal perspectives. On the other hand, I could see a Paul Ryan emerging from that campus. But I still can’t place Santorum at Penn State (I guess that’s another post).

Back when I applied and was considering going, I think tuition, room, and board cost about $7,000. (This was of course during the Taft administration.)

We know that Ayn Ryan himself was the beneficiary of social security payments because of his father’s untimely death.

What’s your take on Catholics and abortion politics in the near future? I was intrigued that the Miami students cited above were eager for the Republicans to ditch the pro-life stuff as much as the anti-gay marriage plank. Do you think that the abortion issue will cease to be as salient an issue for Catholics in Northern Ohio? Is it possible that abortion will die out as the baby boomers age and the Kulturkampfen of the 1960s and 1970s fade?

(I know that Mr. Catholic, Rick Santorum, was beating not just on abortion but also birth control in the Republican primaries, but most Americans seemed to by mystified by these positions. And I know: he won the Colorado caucus! But that just goes to show you how un-democratic the caucus system really is.)

In presidential elections in the Reconstruction era the region was the Midwest’s stronghold of Republicanism, when the Grand Old Party advocated equality. In the twentieth century, the rise of heavy industry and the concomitant increase of immigrant laborers did not seem to alter the region’s historic commitment to personal liberty, self determination, and civil rights–though the KKK did appear in Youngstown in the 1920s when that city housed more immigrants than native-born white Americans but ended up leaving after 4-5 years. The region’s political tendencies remained the same, though the transformation of the nation’s political parties meant that the Western Reserve voted Democratic, even in the overwhelming victory of Ronald Reagan in the presidential election of 1984. (Don’t intend to get rah-rah about the Western Reserve; it’s just that I have been undertaking some research about regional politics and identity and trying to make sense of it all.)

When I was growing up two-thirds of the state’s population lived in Northern Ohio; not true now–witness the growth of Columbus and Cincinnati and the loss of population in the Rust Belt. That shift has something to do, I think, with the sorts of complexity we see on the ground throughout the state.

Our household doesn’t read newspapers. We have lost any respect for the Keller vocational family more than a decade ago. We listen to dear NPR and ask “what are they talking about?” Oxford? University towns have been progressive forever. I prefer Cambridge, especially punting on the Cam.

Tomorrow you’ll find out that the bad guys won again, no matter who wins.