Shawn Redden’s Jan. 23 editorial (“State of the Union: witness to cowardice”) serves as an excellent launching pad from which to introduce to you the organization I have had the privilege of leading during the past year. In fewer than 750 words, I’m going to attempt to make the case to you that the grounds on which Redden criticizes the Conservative Leadership Association in fact confirm why it is the single greatest asset to political life at Washington University. Hate conservatives? Good-keep reading.
I came to college having grown up in Brookline, Massachusetts, the Boston suburb where JFK spent his childhood. His parents are buried in a cemetery down the street from my home on Woodland Road. As I entered Washington University, Barney Frank was my representative, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry were my senators, and Bill Clinton was my president. Needless to say, I was heavily exposed to liberal values and determined to defend them.
Somehow I fell into the wrong crowd, and a friend convinced me to attend a Conservative Leadership Association meeting. What I encountered-quite different from the band of racist/sexist/low-IQ rednecks I expected-was a group of people who were willing to engage ideas. These were people who swallowed books whole, who knew their economics and history, but most importantly, who positively disagreed with each other.
Some felt that Bush’s faith-based initiative was a necessary step towards helping our nation’s most needy citizens, while others felt that it dangerously violated the separation between church and state. Some argued for a moral imperative to spread democracy and freedom worldwide, while others argued in line with paleoconservative isolationist sentiments. At a recent meeting, I polled our attendees and found that two thirds of them were pro-choice, and nearly all supported the right of same-sex couples to get married (with the caveat for some that the government should have no role in marriage at all).
Thus, it should not be of any surprise that a group as astoundingly diverse as the CLA has within the same year hosted Justin Raimondo, an adamantly antiwar speaker, and Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe columnist who holds an entirely opposite view. Time and again, the CLA brings hard-hitting speakers who challenge students (myself included) to confront their deepest held orthodoxies. Whether the topic is the importance of South Park to the conservative movement (Paul Cantor), how hip-hop beat the welfare state (Reginald Jones), or “Why God Exists,” (Richard Swinburne), CLA events are certain to be engaging and provocative no matter what your political views.
That being said, as any organization leader knows, there are other practical considerations as well. For example, availability. It sometimes happens that one semester the speakers we’re able to get lean more “libertarian,” while another semester they’ll lean more “neoconservative.” Perhaps this semester it’s more of the latter due to circumstantial factors. Second, we strive for some degree of balance between big-name speakers and less well-known ones. The big names tend to get the campus excited, help to publicize our group, and attract large crowds-even less politically-minded ones. (hence, the Ultimate Warrior). The downside? They’re expensive, they’re sometimes less intellectual than the less-well-knowns, and of course, there aren’t too many ultra-famous libertarians. Finally, we aim to address issues that are timely, which is why this semester’s speech topics will include the 2004 election (William Kristol of the Weekly Standard), and the media’s role in shaping the Israeli-Arab conflict (Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe).
Through the Washington Witness (our biweekly publication), reading groups, speaker events, Righttalk (our e-mail discussion list), and most of all, our lively discussions at weekly meetings, we manage to do more than any other political group on campus.
But more than just what we do, I would venture to say that disparity of opinion is our group’s single greatest asset. It’s reflected in everything we do, and I’ve worked hard to preserve it. While the ideological bent of our particular members varies from year to year, what will not change is our commitment to offering a broad range of viewpoints that are likely to challenge ourselves and the campus at large.