LI Activism Conference: Day 1 (cont)

The Leadership Institute was born of good intentions. It was founded in 1979 by Morton C. Blackwell, "Barry Goldwater’s youngest elected delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco", "to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative public policy leaders."

I spent today listening to thirty-something Podunk University grads telling me things any junior high schooler running a Dungeons & Dragons club would know about recruiting. I listened to people telling me that using the word "conservative" was the death knell of any burgeoning group, that the focus should be on hip, widely attended events, not ideas, policies, or platforms, that we should never waste time talking to liberals, that supporting the troops can't be compatible with opposing the war, and that Guantanamo Bay is where things don't "git mo' bettah".

Here, awareness of the libertarian/traditionalist split marks me a salon intellectual, and the line between ideology and pragmatism isn't drawn in the sand, but etched in cement. It's not conservative first, intellectual second, it's "CONSERVATIVE! ... ?"

Distance makes the heart grow fonder. I love the Party of the Right. A year into my first serious relationship I bemoaned the smallness of the word "love" in comparison to what I felt for my boyfriend- I feel that ad infinitum now, for my Party.

My heart breaks for the three or four real intellectuals I've met here, because there's nothing for them here, and nothing for them to go back to. We gravitate towards each other like dessicated plants to rain water puddles, seeking islands of stimulating, meaningful conversation in a swamp of sticky pablum and vapid platitudes. I have always resented the Yale bashing in which so many indulge- we take so much for granted.

I used to think that there was a dangerously wide gap between intellectual conservatism and low-brow conservatism. The latter, as I've encountered it here, interacting with supposed conservative "leaders" from across the country, can't properly be called conservatism at all. To do so would be to take the beauty, the complexity, and the genius of a grand orchestral symphony, and ascribe it to an infant's senseless banging on the plastic neon keys of a Fisher Price piano.

There is humility, however- students acknowledge that they simply grew up in conservative Christian communities, are ignorant of philosophy and politics, and express some meager desire for self-improvement and education. These students need a think tank, not a "do tank", goddamnit. And suddenly I realize the full scope of what Helen told me a week or so ago- that the Leadership Institute is a scam.

One of the smart boys here asked me what I hated more: dumb conservatives, or liberals- dumb, ignorant conservatives, no question. The conservative movement is incredibly meaningful to me, and ill-educated boys and girls waving her banner are infinitely more damaging than the suavest leftist. LI not only fails to stem the tide of mindless right-wingers, but encourages it. It has a lot of money, from donors who think they're making a difference by investing in this Institute, helping the conservative leaders of tomorrow along in their struggle. The most egregious sin is that it isn't a conscious scam- the people running it think they're doing the right thing; they don't realize that they're pouring acid rain on a parched tobacco field.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful- they paid for my entire trip: plane tickets, housing, food. They've been nothing but courteous, and the staff isn't as ignorant as the students are, but damnit, there are so many places that money could be going, and it's not only that the money isn't helping, but that it's hurting.

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic- it's only been one day. Maybe I haven't gotten to know the other students well enough. Maybe I'm just a condescending Ivy Leaguer looking down at these state school midwesterners from her Ivory Tower- but the more time I spend here, the more I understand how the Party of Buckley and Goldwater turned into the Party of Bush and McCain.

Leadership Institute Activism Conference: Day 1

In between the overview of the Leadership Institute and the lecture on its "Youth Leadership Schools and Campus Elections", I tried to engage the boy sitting next to me in conversation- about conservatism, about the group he founded, about ideas in general. Ten minutes into the conversation or so, he pauses uncomfortably, looks up at me and asks, "So is there a list of first principles somewhere?..."

The Leadership Institute jokingly calls itself a "do tank", not a "think tank"- its job, according to Bryan Bernys, its National Field Director, is not to explain to people why they should be conservative, but, once they independently decide that they are, to fund events, make connections, and give resources to the groups they represent. As I wrote under the "Comments & Suggestions" field on the evaluation sheet, "a lot of the students I met here are in desperate need of thought. Is it responsible or smart to give money and training to people who don't understand conservatism?"

I sat in "class" from 9:15 am to 5:30 pm today, and spent most of that time restraining myself from either bursting out in anger or hysterical laughter.That said, there are a few bright spots among the dim here at LI, both among the staff and students, and, at the very least, my worst fear was not realized: they're not neocons, and are almost uniformly as hostile to neoconservatism (and some, even, to the GOP) as I am- and we all know how I feel about the GOP.

More later.

"You can’t fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up."
Requiescat in pace, George Carlin.

There are no words. Sir, you'll be missed.

Clothes make the man; naked people have little to no influence on society

E. M. Zanotti over at The American Princess recently bemoaned the lack of hip conservative gear, saying "What annoys me is that there’s a generation of conservatives and libetarians out there who have sorely failed at coming up with catchy slogans that adequately describe their ideological leanings, and moreover, that they manage to publish what few slogans they have on tee shirts that tend to look a little like they were designed for Christian bookstores."

Amen, sister! I have almost nothing in common with your typical Nascar conservative, damnit, and I don't need shirts like this one conflating the issue. I've always felt that there's a much greater gap in our movement between high and low brow conservatism than there is in liberalism, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the snarky tshirts available to both camps. Let's have a gander:
versusOr:
compared withIs that really the kind of trash we want to be associated with? Still, there is hope- I've scavenged the interwebs for many an hour and found some better threads:
For feminists!
For the Man!
For the libertines!
For the fearless!

Or, of course, we could just continue to rock the bowtie.

Hinc illae lacrimae

Don't have much to say, except that this article is brilliant and you all should read it.

In acknowledgment of such frequent controversies and loud revisionism, the compromise is that “Western civilization” continues to metamorphose into something known as “World Civilizations”: India, China, Africa, and the New World merit roughly the same attention in the university core curriculum as the West, inasmuch as they are merely “different,” hardly less influential in the formation of Western and now global civilization. The end result is that today’s students cannot distinguish the role of Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero in the later development of political thought from the general irrelevance of Native American councils or indigenous African tribal meetings. Indeed, to do so would require both reading The Republic and having the courage to suggest informal tribal decision-making is not constitutional government.

. . .

The decline of a classical core in the university also meant that the tragic view was eclipsed by the therapeutic...

...in the new therapeutic mindset, human nature is not, as Thucydides insisted, fixed, but capable of being altered and “improved” in the university by the requisite money, learning, and proper attitude: early death, personal setback, and social unfairness are not innate to the human condition and sometimes to be borne over the generations with courage in the manner of Oedipus or Antigone, but are rather the result of those with power whose necessary dethronement might guarantee a life without such tragedies. Peace and conflict resolution theory classes, not Thucydides and Herodotus, can teach us more about war, since an improved human nature understands that conflict is not caused by evil intent, honor, pride, or fear, and so checked by vigilance, preparedness, and deterrence. Instead the cause of war is the absence of proper counseling, or of money and empathy that might have otherwise prevented genuine mis- communications and misunderstandings between like parties with similar desires for peace. Xerxes, Pericles, Epaminondas, Agesilaos, Alexander—none of these leaders who went to war quite knew what he was doing, and might have prevented the deaths of thousands had he talked with, rather than over, his adversaries.

Three, the present generation alone can claim wisdom and morality, and thereby has the right, and indeed the duty, to condemn the past for not meeting our present standards of perfection. A chauvinistic Socrates was insensitive to his wife; the Greeks held slaves; homosexuals were caricatured by Aristophanes as effeminate—and therefore Hellenic civilization was pathological, its art, literature, and ideas sadly negated by omnipresent bias and oppression, now thankfully being addressed in our contemporary and morally superior generation.

. . .

Penelope used to be praised as the linchpin of the Western family, whose ingenuity, forbearance, and loyalty both mirrored her husband’s and yet supplemented many of the qualities he lacked. Now, she is mostly transmogrified into one of two stereotypes—either a clueless artifact of a philandering husband, or a proto-feminist carving out an antithetical but better world than the male-dominated status quo. Today’s Penelope hardly resembles Homer’s heroine, but she at least tells us a lot about the current anxieties of today’s feminist professors.

. . .

...radical egalitarianism, not truth, is the primary mission of the university... Proper intent—conveniently amorphous and changeable—always trumped cruel fact: the Duke sex entertainer was, after all, a poor African-American performing for a white privileged audience; a Ward Churchill really was sympathetic to Native Americans, and not to the corporate power structure; a cross really does privilege Christianity over Islam.

. . .

We have also lost a sense of balance and magnitude... Herodotus and Thucydides begin their histories by trying to calibrate the relative importance of their own wars under consideration, and they take seriously their assessments of best and worst leaders, or city-states.

We, in contrast, have lost all sense of proportion and simply use the self-absorbed yardstick of our own times versus all others. Thus Iraq—not the summer of 1864 or December 1950—is the worst (fill in the blanks) war, blunder, or quagmire in our history or of all time. A flippant campus slur is the most sexist thing ever heard, as if the frontier woman on the Colorado plains without electricity and with eleven sick children never had it as rough. Wounded Knee is tantamount to Okinawa, the loyalty oaths of the 1950s commensurate to the Inquisition. And why not, when the purpose of education now is not to train young minds in a method of disinterested inquiry supported by historical exempla, but to condition them to think in preordained, deductive fashion—in other words, as Sophists rather than Socratics?

All Aboard the Failboat

These screenshots are from, respectively, http://www.rnc.org, and http://www.johnmccain.com, as in, the first thing you see when you google either the GOP or McCain is.. Obama. Actually, an attack on Obama. Actually, lots of attacks on Obama. Actually, the GOP website doesn't seem to have anything else- oh, wait, except for that bright green stuffed elephant they're trying to sell you. Thank God they haven't totally forgotten the platform.

How many more reasons do you people need?!

In which I try to sit back and contemplate conservatism's own former eloquence

Despite waking late this morning, there was no GOP death notice on my doorstep. So let's try this again.

Libertarianism- which, so far as most gov't policy is concerned, is synonymous with conservatism- is in a sad, sad state right now. Let's take a look at the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, shall we?

He championed social-conservative causes such as the Defence of Marriage Act, which he drafted, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. His moralistic fervour faltered only when it came to his own conduct: twice divorced, he was once photographed licking whipped cream off the breasts of a particularly buxom woman. He says he was raising money for leukaemia research. (Well, he would, wouldn't he?)

He joined the party in 2006 only after being redistricted out of his congressional nest. He once supported both the Patriot Act and the “war on drugs”, though he is now repentant. He won the party's nomination only after six ballots and five hours of voting.

Inspiring. Almost as much as this:

And Mr McCain might pick Minnesota's governor, Tim Pawlenty, as his running-mate. Party insiders warm to both Mr Pawlenty's record and his humble roots. His mother died when he was 16. He says he wants the Republicans to be “the party of Sam's Club [ie, people who shop at Wal-Mart], not the country club”.

I yearn.

So what's a libertarian to do? How can we steer this country in the right direction?

I don't need to tell you that one learns more from failure than from success. The Republican Party needs to lose, badly, if we want them to get the message. So where are the weak spots?

The final battleground will be in the Mountain West, where libertarian voters like their taxes low and their government unpreachy. This makes Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico all “purple” states, which is why Mr Obama visited all three this week and the Democrats will hold their convention in Denver.

Colorado voted for Mr Bush by five points but elected a Democratic governor in 2006. Nevada backed Mr Bush by two points but constantly re-elects the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. New Mexico backed Mr Bush by one point but has a Democratic governor, Bill Richardson.

If you love conservatism, you will
1. vote libertarian (not Libertarian)
2. pray that McCain carries none of the above states, and that Ron Paul makes a strong showing there, with slight victories going to Obama

If we can repeat that across the country, so much the better. Maybe then they'll finally get it:

The libertarian pool also contains more fish than you might think. Polls suggest that 10-20% of the electorate are willing to define themselves as “libertarians” in the sense that, like this newspaper, they are “conservative” on economics and “liberal” on social issues. These soft libertarians have been strikingly willing to break party ranks, whether to support John Anderson in 1980 or Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996.

Libertarian-leaning Republicans are also hog-wrestling mad about what has become of their party under George Bush. Mr Bush has presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s. He put the Republican seal of approval on the biggest intrusion of federal power into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works programme ever (the 2005 highway bill) and the largest new entitlement programme since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid (the prescription-drug benefit). He launched an open-ended “war on terror”. He rode roughshod over states' rights on issues such as assisted suicide. And he has expanded the government's power to eavesdrop on its citizens.