y college days were filled with conflict, including threats and official sanctions. And strangely enough, I wouldn’t have missed a minute of them.

Let me explain. In the 1980s some friends and I co-founded a conservative campus newspaper — the Illini Review — at the University of Illinois. This quickly brought down on us the wrath of the politically correct. We were denounced as bigoted, sexist, homophobic — the whole deal.

Unfortunately, name-calling was the least of it. Our papers — distributed in stacks around campus — were regularly trashed. Our staffers got threatening phone calls. Our budget was cut off by the university because we opposed racial quotas, thereby violating what one professor called the "spirit" and "heart" of university policy.

On one occasion, the head of a homosexual activist group came knocking at my door, demanding to know why we’d refused to run an ad for his group’s lessons in "safe sex" techniques. I told him again what I’d already told him in a letter — the ad violated our moral principles. He threatened to have us taken to court for "discrimination." I told him to go right ahead. (He never did, probably because his legal case was flimsy.)

Despite all this, I am still glad for the experiences. They taught me a valuable lesson: political correctness rules less by persuasion than by intimidation.

Of course the politically correct don’t want you know this. They’re very vocal in their support of "tolerance" and "diversity" and the "free exchange of ideas." They want the prestige of being a sort of Socratic debating society dedicated to intellectual exploration.

Yet anyone who’s spent time in a campus town knows that no place is less tolerant, much less respectful, of dissent.

Departures from the party line generally bring an automatic response. Say that abortion kills children and you’re a patriarchal oppressor of women. Say that the theory of evolution is fatally flawed and you’re a religious fanatic. Say that homosexuality is immoral — or just that it’s a treatable emotional disorder — and you’re a homophobic hatemonger.

None of these responses are actual arguments. They’re not really serious accusations either, though at first glance they seem to be. They’re just curses. They’re not meant to describe or to analyze; they’re meant to stigmatize and to silence.

Oftentimes they work: Large numbers of students either parrot the PC line or (more often) quietly avoid contradicting it. Yet political correctness looks a lot stronger on the surface than it really is. The truth is, its strength (intimidation) is also its weakness — because most people don’t really believe in it.

I’ve found that few students are hard-core leftists. Some are closet Christians or conservatives, or at least sympathizers. Others are potential sympathizers — unsure what they believe, but disillusioned with the culture around them and looking for something meaningful. Still others are just uneasy with a campus establishment bent on suppressing debate and smearing dissenters.

All of these are people you can talk with and, frequently, persuade. In fact, sometimes your task is less persuading them than emboldening them to pursue thoughts they’ve already had. For example, everyone knows deep down that abortion isn’t just birth control; that’s why even most "pro-choicers" feel compelled to say they’re "personally opposed" to it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you’ll win over everyone. I’m not even saying you’ll win a majority. I am saying you can win a lot more people than you might think — and if you win even one, the rewards can be great.

You never know what a difference one individual might make. I knew a liberal student who, after conversations with friends of mine, turned conservative, then went on to become an energetic pro-family state legislator and win his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate.

More important, you never know what a difference you might make to that individual.

Maybe you’ll convince a pregnant girl not to abort her baby. Maybe all she needs is one person to speak up, or to care.

Maybe you’ll start a classmate wondering if he or she wasn’t made for something better than drinking, drugs and sex.

Maybe you’ll show someone who’s been fed on stereotypes of the "Religious Right" that believers can be thoughtful and caring — starting him on the road to finding Christ.

I’ve seen all these things happen over and over, against the tide of campus culture. Every one of them testifies eloquently to Who is in control.

The gods of secularism and political correctness are nothing compared to the God of Israel. They can only intimidate us if we let them — if we forget who our God is and what He does.

Maybe He tests us with our college experience just to remind us.