American social liberals have prided themselves on possessing superior intelligence for at least as many years as their more conservative brethren have insisted that the world is 6,000 years old and evolution is a fiction. For decades, universities with political science and/or liberal arts programs were seen as bastions of not merely bleeding heart leftist thought but also hot beds of communists, feminists, and the modern equivalent of free love. For better or worse, conservative college students have grown weary of being caught up in that stereotype or, conversely, being depicted as intellectually backwards. Inspired by political successes in local and national politics, including the White House and Supreme Court, neo-cons are honing their argument skills and preparing to kick rhetorical ass.While the art of conversation may have been lost to the immediacy of email and its myriad abbreviations and emoticons, interest in college level debate appears to have increased for those most likely to turn to the so-called Red States for their philosophical inspiration. Some perhaps-too-complacent Blue Staters may be shocked to learn that Southern Baptist Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist Liberty University is not only continuing to experience growth in spite of a series of financial crisis, but is ranked number one among the nation’s college debate teams. For a comparison, venerable Ivy League university Harvard clocks in at a relatively distant 14.

Why the sudden second wind?

While left wing activists and orators have had the opportunity to rest for decades on their laurels, confident in their superiority and the comforting delusion that they have won the cultural wars, right wingers have been rallying, organizing, and channeling the fire in their bellies into political action. Convinced that their philosophical opponents are, quite literally, leading the nation to hell – although perhaps not in anything as innocent as a hand basket – youthful religious conservatives are determined to not only prove the stereotype of the sexually promiscuous college slacker wrong but use their positions to influence the thinking of others their own age, all in the hopes of turning the country back from what they perceive as its impending spiritual death.

Unquestionably drawing inspiration and encouragement from second-term President George W. Bush’s recent Supreme Court appointments, 75-percent of the students that make up the Liberty debate team plan on using their skills at verbal persuasion in the courtroom. If they can argue knowingly and convincingly enough, the future of America may well resemble something entirely other than what it does now. One freshman team member explained his agenda quite plainly when he stated that his goal is to “make an impact in the field of law on abortion and gay rights, to get back to America’s godly heritage.”

The potential for gallows irony in such a statement during a time of “war,” with forces fueled at least in part by profoundly conservative religious ideology, should be lost on no one, least of all liberals. Given how coffee-culture contemptuous (if not plain indifferent) many Democrats and assorted social leftists have become toward their philosophical adversaries, there’s no knowing whether such a realization has any sense of urgency for those willing to drag themselves away from their TiVos and Burning Man preparations long enough to actually do anything with the information. Unfortunately for them, their right-of-center foes are fueled not only with a religious fervor which leftists do not possess, but also by a sense of having been oppressed by an arrogant and prideful culture insensitive to the eternal harm its excesses were exacting upon an apparently previously god-blessed and approved people. John Green, a fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that “evangelicals have always wanted to persuade people to the faith,” so such a situation is ripe with motivation, especially since, as he continues, “the new thing is that evangelicals want to be more involved in the world now. Conservative Christian leaders would like to have a cadre of conservative Christian attorneys, who then become judges, politicians, and political appointees.”

The enthusiasm of a single conclave for conservative activism could be uncomfortably shrugged aside as a fluke, but a newfound dedication to honing evangelical dialectics is spreading. Thirty-nine-percent of the student body of Patrick Henry College, located outside of Washington D.C., engages in organized debate – including some that includes its president as moot-court coach. Baptist Cedarville University in Ohio has tripled its funding of debate scholarship, and Liberty University’s founder assures America that his graduates will participate in “salt ministry,” aimed at “becoming the conscience of the culture.”

That conscience has already influenced real world national and international politics, given that Liberty debate coach Brett O’Donnell was hired to prep Bush for all three of his presidential debates in 2004, although his urging of the president to control his nonverbal tics went initially unheeded. Two Republican hopefuls for the 2008 race have already contacted him for potential services rendered.

Where are the calm, rational, and articulate voices of the left that will be raised to challenge the increasingly audible and brave new voices of the right?