Many years ago it wasn't that way. Back in the late seventies the Yale Political Union had two right-of-center parties (Tories and Party of the Right), and spawned conservative intellectuals like Richard Brookhiser and Richard Vigilante. Conservative pranksters would host "feasts for B-1" to counter the leftists who were fasting for defense cuts. There was vigorous give and take, but little of the hate that is apparently de rigueur on the left nowadays.