Two articles of interest today about campus politics.
The first is an AP story about how Students for a Democratic Society has reemerged on campuses. Read about it here.
The second, and more important article, is in the American Conservative. In case you don’t know, this is the magazine founded by Pat Buchanan. It’s one part protectionist, two parts anti-war, and 1/2 part crazy. But this article is excellent. Read about it here.
It talks about how campus conservatives are not in touch with the intellectual underpinnings of the conservative movement. Instead of reading Kirk, Weaver, Hayek, Buckley, etc., most college republicans want to be “activist” and shake things up. Now activism is great, but you have to have philosophical grounding or you will start supporting things that aren’t conservative at all. For example, you won’t see the college republicans criticizing Bush, eventhough, as conservatives they should be.
That’s where Carolina Review comes in. We are the intellectual forum for the conservative movement on campus. The libertarian vs. conservative debate on marijuana in our upcoming issue, for example, shows some philosophical life in the movement. And that’s what the book club we did last semester was about. We read essays from the founding conservatives and examined what they argued about back then.
So, hopefully we’ll get back to that, but in the meantime, anyone interested in what it means to be a conservative, should read the article in the American Conservative, check out http://www.isi.org, and be a reader of what Albert Jay Nock calls “serious” books. That means books that require you to think and reflect. Nock wrote that this world has plenty of people that are literate, but few people who really know how to read. Be able to read.
I’d like to read some G.K. Chesterton. Specifically, I think I am going to pick up his book Orthodoxy.
ISI distributes the Chesterton Review. You can read a sample copy (that is 260 pages long) athttp://www.isi.org/journals/chesterton_review.html.
Not only has the campus Right drifted from its roots–so have many elected leaders in the Republican Party. Last Tuesday’s election results bear witness to this philosophical abandonment.
I agree 100 percent. It is no wonder campus conservatives don’t get it, when national and state leaders don’t get it. In the US House, for example, in the last Congress only 101 out of 230 Republicans were in the Republican Study Committee, the conservative wing of the party. And even among those 101, not all were staunch. And on the state level, forget it. There are maybe 5 conservatives in Raleigh.