Comments on: In defense of Young Americans for Liberty

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By: Jerome Bauer

Jerome Bauer — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:42:52 +0000

I sent this extra credit essay question to all my students:

Who really won the Cold War? Was the real winner, as a recent guest speaker at Washington University’s Conservative Leadership Association has suggested, what the Catholic philosopher G. K. Chesterton called the “Servile State”? Are we, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, converging with the People’s Republic of China, in the worst way, as some have suggested?

Please see “Are Americans a Broken People? Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression,” Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet, posted December 11, 2009.

Here is a quote from the article:

“Do most schools teach young people to be action-oriented — or to be passive? Do most schools teach young people that they can affect their surroundings — or not to bother? Do schools provide examples of democratic institutions — or examples of authoritarian ones?”

“A long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids — through fear — learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.”

“Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials — badges of compliance for corporate employers — in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.”

What do you think of this? Have we lost the ability to defend ourselves, and each other?

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By: J

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:12:58 +0000

So why was Jon Burns all over the local media acting as the official spokesperson of YAL? It seems like characterizing him as “the owner of a construction company” ignores the fact that it was his idea to do the gulag in the first place.

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By: Jerome Bauer

Jerome Bauer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:54:45 +0000

I agree that we lefties have to get our act together. The campus conservatives have the Conservative Leadership Association (not “Alliance,” as I misstated in an earlier post; thanks to their program coordinator Caleb Posner for the correction). Many YAL members attend their meetings.

Let’s bring back the Progressive Action Coalition, a broad center-left group, to counter and complement the center-right CLA.

You can call me a leftie if you wish, but everybody is conservative about something. A few years ago, on my own initiative and with my own money, I posted flyers all over our campus exhorting you all to “Call Me Old-Fashioned.” One of the things you can call me old-fashioned about is my notion that one function of an American university is to prepare our students for life in a democracy, not a police state.

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By: CP

CP — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:33:26 +0000

I wasn’t there and haven’t been on campus for a couple years, so I have no opinion on the event or reaction to the event, but one thing hasn’t changed: Libertarians are almost always better at argumentation than liberal progressives, and they are winning the rhetoric war. Anyone reading the comments section can see that. Come on lefties — use some thought, logic and reason!

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By: stupid.

stupid. — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:48:27 +0000

Unfortunately, Thakur is right- this display was idiotic. You condemn other dictatorships and totalitarian governments for using silly scare tactics on their citizens, yet you do the same thing to warp people into believing that somehow, our government is quickly approaching the horrors of the communist soviet union.

And no, it’s not that I have some stupid bias against you- I’m also a libertarian. you guys were embarrassing, to say the least.

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By: Dirk Doebler

Dirk Doebler — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:32:44 +0000

Anonymous: It wasn’t a foolish mockery. It was a very serious way to show the horrid atrocities that occur under Socialism and Communism. Had you presented it to them in an unbiased manner informing them over the information on our handouts they might not have felt that way, but possibly. YAL actually received. support from former Soviet citizens and had one come and give a lecture on life under socialism in the Soviet Union last Thursday. I think most of the people who were appalled were probably those that didn’t like the lack of political correctness more than anything else. How anyone who isn’t Soviet could be offended and appalled makes no sense because it can’t even be misconstrued as an attack on them like it could be for former Soviet citizens.

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By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:55:07 +0000

Nope. Thakur is absolutely correct. It was a bizarre, highly offensive display. I have relatives who survived those events, and seeing your foolish mockery of them for political gain disgusted me as a WASH U student. I expect more out of my fellow students. And to be honest, YAL should not delude themselves: perhaps other extreme groups praised their display, but most students did not. My conservative, libertarian, liberal, and moderate friends were all equally appalled at YAL’s attention grab.

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By: Jerome Bauer

Jerome Bauer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:35:54 +0000

Everybody please look up “libertarian socialism.”

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