American flag print short-shorts, GOP keychains, elephant monogram car decals, Reagan/Bush '84 vintage tees, dogs named W. These are all things you'll find on a Southern college campus, being sported by a crowd of 18 to 20-somethings that have likely never voted in an election outside of Student Government.

I'm addressing directly the group of collegiate millennials that find conservative politics to be fashionable, regardless of their own ideologies.

College students are among the nation's most uninvolved and unmotivated citizens today, but it's interesting that on any college campus, you'll find laptops and water bottles and t-shirts plastered with politically motivated images.

These students wear these things proudly, but the same people will likely never actually participate in civic life. The same people who sport political mantras on their cars will likely scoff at the campus-sponsored mayoral debate. It just so happens that many of these pseudo-politicos identify with conservative politics versus liberal ones, because at some point, conservatives were labeled as "frat," or preppy, and these styles are king in the South.

I'm not denouncing conservative politics in the least. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, there's beauty in being an active participant in the world's greatest political system. My problem is with those who take advantage of it.

There is nothing fashionable in being deliberately uninformed but "patriotically" styled.

There is nothing fashionable in advocating and promoting prejudice, no matter how many times you could possibly be retweeted by Old Row or TFM.

I am part of a generation that celebrates and thrives on concepts, not executions. Resulting from that, I have incredibly uninformed peers that outwardly identify as conservative Republicans because somewhere along the way, that ideology became more cool and more popular than it was true.

These peers take for granted being active participants in politics, but very much enjoy trying to look like a member of the Bush or Romney families.

As part of this generation, I want to say that in defense of a Republican Party running and thriving on values, there is so much more to the GOP than being "frat," preppy, or really, stylish at all.

Even if being "frat" equated to "cool," it shouldn't matter which side of the aisle you stand on -- just that you stand -- solidly on principle, not on appearance.