A quick stroll through the Dale Hall parking lot confirms my suspicion: My professors do not share my views.

A cursory bumper sticker scan indicates a possible rift between those who begrudgingly replaced their Dean bumper stickers with Kerry stickers and those who did not, but they currently completely agree that democracy is over, so their vote did not matter anyway.

My GPA, however, remains intact, as do the GPAs of many other conservative students.

For while OU professors may be liberal, rarely are they liberally biased. Overall, our professors perform an admirable job of at least tolerating conservative thought, grading fairly and keeping snide "Bush is an idiot" comments to a maximum of two per class.

Some conservative students will never grasp the distinction between opinion and bias, and they will frequently complain about unfair treatment. The left, too, must note this distinction.

Despite all the warnings about how Bush was going to eliminate the Bill of Rights and make dissent illegal, the left actually remains a viable political factor in America. Republicans are not winning elections with 99.6 percent of the vote.

Howard Dean can still say he hates Republicans and everything for which they stand. Novelist Jane Smiley can still say that, in a just world, the Bush administration "would be taken out and shot."

Professors can still adorn their vehicles with "Dissent is Patriotic" bumper stickers. If an OU freshman jokes about a presidential assassination, he becomes a minor campus celebrity rather than mysteriously "disappearing" four days later.

So they imagine. They have all seen the movies. Didn't the '60s look cool? If only modern campus warriors would stage so many protests and sit-ins (Last week's was a good start.

Did you see when they angered the Marines?) The Chicago riots? Surely they could find a few students to take a cracked head and a couple of broken ribs for the cause. Just wait until CNN internationally broadcasts images of National Guardsmen beating down anti-war protesters.

Occasionally, the left manages to hold a sizable protest, complete with aging hippie songsters and the planned arrests of preordained media martyrs. These people, knowing that prosecution is unlikely, gladly submit to arrest as a demonstration of the First Amendment's death.

Likewise, the media is determined to bring down this administration just as they destroyed that crook Nixon.

From the Bush National Guard documents to the Downing Street Memos to the Plame investigation, each week produces a new smoking gun, a new piece of evidence to further convince the masses that this administration is just as crooked as all reasonable and intelligent people already know.

I understand that many people view George Bush as a war criminal, a religious nut, an idiot and the world's greatest threat to justice, peace, freedom and all other nice-sounding generic terms. I disagree. I view George Bush as an irresponsible spender. Furthermore, his nominations to important government positions rely too heavily on cronyism. I could continue, but I have made my point. This column is still in print. Anyone can make any number of critical statements about our political leaders without fear of a summary execution.

The American left has spent the last several years loudly and automatically opposing each of Bush's actions. They were not shot, tortured or put into work camps.

As the 2004 election drew near, without fear of retaliation, they united their voices against the racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic Bush administration.

They even opposed the regime change of racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic administrations in the Middle East, those that did retaliate when they discovered dissent.

Tonight, plenty of hip postmodern intellectuals will go to their favorite independent bookstore, purchase another copy of their favorite Chomsky reader and return to their homes without inciting a major Fourth Amendment incident.

And tonight, millions of cars, regardless of the stickers on the back, will start without an explosion, free to survive another night in Bush's America.

-- Chad Oliver is a finance and mathematics senior. His column appears every other Tuesday, and he can be reached at dailyopinion@ou.edu.
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