College conservatives have a problem. It starts with 'R', rhymes with 'adicalism', and it's threatening to erode what popular support conservative ideas have on college campuses across the nation. Radical organizations on the right, in hopes of garnering more attention for their ideas, have resorted to increasingly provocative tactics to spread their message on America's college campuses. And to some degree, it's been effective. Polling at the latest CPAC suggests that nearly half of its attendees were between the ages of 18 and 25, temporarily dispelling the old political adage that a conservative at 25 has no heart and a liberal at 35 no brain.
Of course calling them "conservatives" is a little inaccurate. A conservative, in the words of Russell Kirk, is simply "one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night". They hold structured liberty and order to be invaluable bastions of defense for free society, and that the responsibility of navigating the tenuous balance between the two falls to a State deriving its authority from the consent of the governed. Conservatism, by its very nature, opposes radicalism. But on college campuses, concepts like "conservative" and "radical" have become dangerously entangled by organizations whose practices discourage the exchange of ideas in favor of provocative presentation.
At Vanderbilt for example, a local chapter of the radical libertarian organization Young Americans for Liberty has found limited success in putting on large events like the one on March 26th, where they prominently displayed the 'National Debt Clock' alongside photocopied images of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to illustrate the need for disbanding the Federal Reserve. At public events, they wear Guy Fawkes masks to advertise their presence, and have even been known to target conservatives with their extremist ire. At the recent IMPACT Symposium, members of the organization passed out leaflets pejoratively branding both Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol as 'neo-cons'.
Organizations like YAL are sheep in wolves' clothing for college conservatives. On politically apathetic college campuses, the outrageous certainly garners its fair share of attention. While YAL has no trouble attracting large crowds with their antics, traditional organizations like College Republicans have difficulty pulling in similar crowds for notable speakers like moderate Republican Governor Bill Haslam. In a perverted twist on reality, public apathy allows these radical organizations to set the agenda for public discourse, oftentimes with alarming consequences.
In this alternate reality, the inability or unwillingness of true college conservatives to engage their base leaves an atmosphere in which radicalized conservatism is allowed to flourish. As these radical organizations grow in number and membership, the conservative voice on college campuses begins to disappear. If anything, college campuses provide a startling microcosm for a world in which political dialogue between opposing views gives way to entrenched extremism; a world in which the exchange of ideas succumbs to political isolationism.
College conservatives need to take ownership of conservative ideas away from these radical groups. They simply can't afford to let a small band of radicals wrest away control of the movement that Buckley popularized -- that Reagan realized. And the stakes could never be higher. With an unprecedented federal deficit, ballooning unemployment, and American troops abroad, the public is crying for answers true conservatives can provide. Fiscal prudence and conservative principles are ideas that only reasoned debate can bring about, not aggressive pamphleteering, hokey 'Bernanke Bills', or symbolic masks.
The election of 2012 will serve as a vital checkpoint for the health of the young conservative movement. Will true conservatives with genuine messages take back college campuses? Or will the radical right prevail, sending thousands of young alienated voters to the polls to support Barack Obama's recently launched bid for reelection. The future of young conservatives -- and perhaps the movement as a whole -- depends on it.
Adora Svitak: The Shaky Marriage of Apathy and Activism
these college 'radical conservatives' appear to be mirrors of the SDS I remember from Kent State.
Anti-intellectual, ironically, and though "everything is political', proudly ignorant of the political process or the history behind their purported political position, they were more fired up about being 'radical' than achieving anything of value. My roommate joined to be close to her boyfriend, really radical. :-D
Oh, my, that is soooo radical. Shutter the windows, bolt the doors and hide the children....
Good grief.
Putting aside his genteel rhetoric; when you look at Reagan's policy record he seems to have far more in common with radical groups like the VAL than you might want to admit.
Conservatism is an alien within the body politc and social order. It can never be at home here. Conservatives claim they are maligned and misunderstood.
That is because they don't belong here.
It is a political philosophy born from the belief man is essentially evil, so the only true function of government is command and control, hence the "no heart" comment above.
No government in human history has ever been constituted on conservative principles, except by force.
The author has it wrong; The YAL types he describes ARE true conservatives. The difference between them and Buckley is the latter used bigger words. The difference between them and Reagan is the latter could, simply, act better (in the Hollywood sense.)
All that is necessary for the evil of conservatism to flourish is for good liberals everywhere to do nothing.
Another reason to re-institute the draft; imagine the tornado-like intensity of a reborn college campus liberal movement if THAT came to pass.
By Thomas Sowell
Those who rail against profits and "greed" seldom stop to think through what they are saying, much less go check the facts. Most of the great American fortunes— RockefelleÂr, Ford, Carnegie, etc. — came from finding more efficient ways to produce a product or service at a lower cost, so that it could be sold at a lower price and attract more customers. If making a fortune represents greed, then greed is what drives prices down.
None of this matters to people who have been conditioneÂd to respond to the word profit automaticaÂlly, as Pavlov's dog was conditioneÂd to respond to certain sounds.
"Never speak to me of profit," India's legendary leader Pandit Nehru once said to that country's leading industrialÂist. "It's a dirty word." Policies based on that attitude cost millions of Indians a better life for decades, by stifling India's businessesÂ.
Indian businesses flourished around the world — except in India. Only after India's severe restrictioÂns on business were lifted in the past dozen years has its economic growth taken off, creating rising incomes, employment and tax revenues. This poverty-stÂricken country could have had all those things 40 years earlier, except for a prejudice against a word.
"The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hatiÂng wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."
Eric Hoffer
The rest of the country is not poorer by the amount of Bill Gates' fortune today and was not poorer by the amount of John D. Rockefeller's fortune a century ago. Both men were selling a product that others were also selling, but more people chose to buy theirs. Rockefeller's improvements in the oil industry brought down the price of oil to a fraction of what it had been before. Would the public have been better off if older and more costly methods of producing, processing and shipping oil had continued to be used, leading to prices far higher than necessary?
Rockefeller himself donated enough of his money to create a world-class university from day one -- the University of Chicago -- as well as donating to innumerable other philanthropic projects, as has Bill Gates.
More to the point, people have the right to be called what they want to be called. The crazies call themselves conservatives. So be it. The fact is that whenever conservatives try to present themselves as reasonable and moderate, the illusion lasts exactly until they begin to gain access to power, when they inevitably produce the crazy again from beneath their unassuming disguises. The whole concept of a "real" conservative proceeds directly from conservatives' desire to distance themselves from their own immoderate, irrational, extremist past. "No," they tell us, "we weren't the ones who supported slavery for centuries, we weren't the ones who fought against labor unions by shooting people dead in the streets, etc. Those were some other conservatives who weren't 'real' conservatives. It wasn't us who elected Bush and supported his phony war against Iraq, and his abandonment of New Orleans to its fate. We are 'real' conservatives. We would never do that."
Right.
Why is the public apathetic? They can see how corrupt politics has become and how little public opinion counts on most major issues. Both parties have lost crediblity with a large swath of the American people.