By [email protected]

In a recent letter to the editor, Ryan Lowe offers his opinion, “as people become more educated about the world around them, they abandon the incredibly outdated and unjustifiable ideals of conservatism.” I will agree that education helps people abandon outdated and unjustifiable beliefs such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. But let?s not confuse the ideals of conservatism; family values, filial piety, personal responsibility, and hard work, with backward beliefs in wide-sweeping statements. Confusing correlation with causation is a logical flaw that is tested in Stats 1040 and later on the LSAT. Being on any campus with liberal professors for 4 or 5 years might lead one to believe that as people get more education (my professor has a PhD) they become more liberal (he/she is a liberal). That?s a common mistake in logical reasoning. After working in the corporate world for 10 years before coming back for more education, I have known enough conservative business and community leaders with advanced degrees to know that education does not equal becoming liberal or abandoning conservative ideals. Finally, if we say that being ?uneducated? makes my parents and grandparents ?comically uninformed,? then we are no better than those who hold backward racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs that we are striving so hard to stamp out. No, we are worse. We are then guilty of elitism.