Last week, two young liberals asked for help finding a job in the ideas industry. And I didn’t have a great answer.

It made sense that they were asking: We were at a conference for liberals, dedicated to building a version of the doctrine that works in the 21st century. They were interested in studying ideas professionally, and I was there to moderate a panel about political philosophy.

Yet I found myself struggling to give good advice. Sure, they could try for an internship at a liberal publication or think tank, but those are fiercely competitive and don’t pay much. They could apply for a PhD program, but teaching jobs were scarce even before President Donald Trump took a hammer to American academia.

What’s really missing are programs of a specific kind — ones that help college students and recent grads engage with Big Ideas and connect with Important People.

If my young acquaintances were right-wing, I might have told them to apply for National Review’s Buckley and Rhodes journalism fellowships — multiyear paid opportunities to write for a national audience straight out of college. For a lesser commitment, they could have tried for the Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship — a three-week program where you receive $1,500, a $700 travel stipend, free housing, paid meals, and an opportunity to study with some of the most influential (and radical) figures of the Trump era.

Those are two examples of numerous well-funded programs explicitly designed to usher as many bright young people into the institutional conservative world as possible. If you’re an ambitious young college grad, and anywhere on the spectrum from libertarian to hardcore Trumpist, you’ve got tons of options to get into the ideas game.

My young acquaintances really wanted a liberal version of such a thing. But as far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem to exist. Where there should be a talent pipeline from universities to liberal public intellectualism, there is a giant sucking sound instead.

And, increasingly, it’s giving the right a leg up in winning the future.

The right’s winning........

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