I am most concerned by the profile of “A Young Conservative” (Liberal Arts) featured in your June issue. While I realize the election is not yours but rather that of a conservative student newspaper at “one of America’s largest universities,” I am fearful that youthful conservatives, of which I am a part, are becoming less and less capable of discerning the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, and the culture from the counterculture.

Initially I was elated that a paragon for conservatives of tomorrow was a “Leisure Studies” major, assuming as I did a definition of “Leisure” along the lines of Joseph Pieper. But only moments after my euphoria did I read the following; “Goals: To have a successful career as a special events planner . . . to plan a Presidential Inauguration.” Suddenly I felt the sort of suspicion one experiences when entering a surprise party planned for another though thought for a brief moment to be for oneself. A “Special Events Planner” sounds like something right out of the Kantian “workaday” world Pieper so aptly describes, which threatens our very cult’s existence.

As I read on things became worse. As if epicurean enjoyments that would make King Hedon elated (“I really enjoy: spending time with friends, going to parties, dancing, and eating”) or trivial concerns about her hair were not enough, readers were left with the following: “I read: Danielle Steele and Stephen King.” Can this be?

Perhaps modernity has won out after all. I am by no means optimistic about a conservative movement, so intimate with the essence of our existence, surviving very long when its leaders of tomorrow are of the sort outlined here. God save us!

        —Michael D. Curry
Comstock Park, MI