Posted on 08/04/2005 6:40:41 AM PDT by rob777
This week, hundreds of young conservatives from college and university campuses across America are gathering at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for the annual Young America's Foundation Conference. They are hip, intelligent, politically savvy, and the most determined group of campus activists since the 1960's radicals.
As the hippie professors' pony tails wax grayer and grayer, the rising generation of conservative students grows stronger and stronger.
No one knows the burgeoning power of the conservative movement on America's college campuses like the far-Left activists whose efforts these days are consistently less persuasive, less civil, and less consequential. "Liberals do predominate in college and university faculties," writes Campus Progress director David Halperin. But,
it is conservatives who are winning the battle of ideas on campus these days. Progressives have been out-hustled and need to fight back – with serious, comprehensive efforts to strengthen progressive voices among young people and to empower new generations of leaders. If progressives do not step up to meet these challenges, they risk widening the conservative advantage for many decades to come.
So last month, Campus Progress held its first national conference for liberal students to counteract the fruitful work of groups like Young America's Foundation and the Leadership Institute, Collegiate Network, College Republicans, and campus Christian and pro-life groups. Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, claims that campus life is "rapidly tilting rightward." It is certainly an exaggeration – professors are overwhelmingly left-wing, administrators enforce political correctness with vengeance, and the terms of learning are set by educators who call themselves socialists, communists, progressives, liberals, and/or atheists.
But clearly, conservatives are in the fight that the Left thought it won more than three decades ago. "Conservatives, now dominant in government, seem to be aiming for control of remaining frontiers," Halperin writes. "Today there is strong evidence of an intensified conservative effort to grab the upper hand in the campus world."
An impressive corps of young conservatives already fill the think tanks and congressional offices and Bush administration posts in the nation's capitol. And the influential media conservatives are younger names like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rich Lowry, Laura Ingraham, Joe Scarborough and Dinesh D'Souza.
"Meanwhile," Halperin mourns, "a Washington, D.C., coalition meeting of progressive groups on any given issue is likely to be directed by the same people who led those meetings 20 years ago." Speakers at the Campus Progress conference included Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, Dee Dee Myers, and various folks from the labor unions, old media, and arts and entertainment fields.
There could be no better contrast between the mood at this week's Young America's Foundation Conference – optimistic, aggressive, confident – and the mood at last month's Campus Progress Conference – pessimistic, stuck-in-the-1960s, bewildered.
The young Right may have more work to do, but the young Left doesn't even know how to defend its territory. For too long, it has taken its establishment for granted. And it was the establishment, you may recall, that the Left aimed to destroy in the 1960s. Now that they are the establishment, the same pattern of rebellion must repeat. Only this time, it's a conservative youth rebellion.
Young Americans are rebelling on campus – not to uproot, but to restore the ancient roots of our civilization; not to announce a revolution, but to declare the message of ordered liberty; not to protest soldiers and kill babies, but to support our military in the war on terror and choose life in the war on abortion.
It's about time, of course. Political correctness has permeated so deeply into the contemporary campus that young people, instead of being attracted by it, are so repulsed that they are driven to seek conservative ideas. Many students first hear conservative ideas at campus speeches or conferences sponsored by Young America's Foundation. Other college students have grown up listening to talk radio, going to church, and learning conservatism from their parents. Still others hail from the growing homeschool movement, read Christian literature, or attend popular Christian conferences sponsored by Summit Ministries, Worldview Academy, Focus on the Family, Intervarsity, or Campus Crusade for Christ.
Besides the growing conservative movement on major secular campuses, the student body growth at evangelical Christian colleges outpaces growth at any other kind of higher education institution.
In other words, there's hope for the future. The days of the radical Left on America's campuses are as numbered as the waning employability of the Baby Boom generation. And the Right, celebrating permanence and principles and posterity – the requisites for further advances in the next generation – is rising.
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These are the types of people who almost won it for Reagan in 1976 and did so in 1980.
Sean Hannity is a young conservative?
Just goes to show...those who have the kids, rule the world.
Let the libs keep aborting...they will be non-existent soon.
These are the types of people who almost won it for Reagan in 1976 and did so in 1980.
Let's see what they can do in 2008.
I got three in training right now!
ping
Since me and him are about the same age, I'm going to have to say "yea".
Rob, this is great news. I sense the movement is growing too. College Republicans is gaining membership on many campuses. Less important than political party is whether students hold the right values versus no values or whatever Hollywood directs. Pray they will figure it out.
Good news! Good post!
I'd say this is true of College Republican-types, but not people in college conservative clubs.
Do you mean the Young America's Foundation, or Young Americans for Freedom?
Political correctness has permeated so deeply into the contemporary campus that young people, instead of being attracted by it, are so repulsed that they are driven to seek conservative ideas.
I've done my part. Two grown daughters that would kill a lib and eat their children if necessary.
;^)
Compared to Bill Clinton, Sean Hannity is a young man. He still has little children at home.
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