Fri May 18, 2012
Christopher Bedford
Young Conservatives Fight Back
By Christopher Bedford, Washington, DC – March 2010
It was a warm Friday morning and spring was dawning on the Mason Dixon line. Throngs of self-proclaimed-liberals and other curious bystanders trudged on in a mile-long line to hear President Obama speak at George Mason University.
Outside the entrance to the Patriot Center, local activist chapters from Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) led chants of protest from a designated “free speech” area. And as the audience slowly piled into the stadium, they stood side-by-side with fellow Conservatives waving banners and Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flags.
“Get in line!” one young activist shouted. “Get in that long line for Dr. Obama’s clinic! And get used to it!” These chants brought on a chorus of 150 Conservatives who cheered and laughed behind him. “If your health care deform is the pill,” he continued, “Our November elections will be the suppository!” “How can you have communism with so many czars?” another Conservative hollered.
As young, flag-waving protestors were dragged out of the venue by police, YAFers crowded the green outside the building letting their voices be heard about what they perceive to be an expensive, big-government, collectivist health care agenda.
Not unlike a scene from the YAF playbook referenced over the last 49 years, this was just another day in the life of a young American Conservative. As the nation’s oldest and most storied young Conservative/Libertarian activist group, tales of arguments, protests and even fist fights go back half a century.
Yet not since YAF’s founding in 1960 has the country grown so weary and angry at the left’s assault on American traditions and values in universities and political offices across the country. At that time YAF and her allies saw that the United States’ unique heritage of strength, liberty, self reliance and free markets was being actively undermined by Keynesian economics, the massive expansion of the welfare state, socialist college agendas and calls for peace with the Red Menace.
The Left often asked then, as now, what the Conservatives would have the state do to solve all the problems of the world? The answer is simple- nothing. In those dark times YAF lead the charge not for more government laws, regulations and policy- but for less. They maintain that the increases in government involvement in the lives of its citizens are not simply unconstitutional- they are immoral.
In a speech in which President Ronald Reagan, honorary YAF chairman for over four decades, launched his political career, said,” [the issue] is whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them themselves.”
YAF fights on in his spirit – battling against big government takeovers and expansions such as Obamacare. “When the government takes from one man to give to another, it makes a victim out of one, a beggar out of the other, and a villain of their government,” read one sign at the George Mason rally.
Though the year may have changed, the battle has not. The circumstances this country finds itself in today are not unlike those that Conservative Americans viewed with dismay 50 years ago.
The epic failure that was the New Deal still hangs like a noose around our necks. And since its passage, the Great Society has left black families languishing in a dependency on handouts- a state of being that crushes the spirit, shackling the poor to a life of mediocrity as beggars for unearned tax dollars.
Instead of addressing these failures and admitting, in the face of mountains of evidence and costs, that socialism is a failed experiment, the government continues to funnel more and more money into entitlement programs every year – raising the ire of right wing Conservatives. The increases necessary to power this sprawling welfare state are written off as mandatory spending instead of the unconstitutional redistribution of “legal plunder” they really are.
Moreover, when a generation grows up with the belief that government owes them a living, helps them get a house, and provides them with health care, etc., people begin to think this is “normal.” But it’s not.
If the granting of entitlements necessitates taking from someone else who has earned it – then it is not a natural right. And it must be understood that a government that can give you all these things is a government that can also take these things away. And that is precisely the state the Founding Fathers worked so hard to prevent.
“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success,” President Calvin Coolidge stated when he was elected president of the Massachusetts Senate in 1914. “Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.”
Today, Calvin Coolidge is gone. So are Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. And with them, it seems, so too has vanished what George Will called, “the beautiful retreat of the state.”
But the fight is not over. The arrogance of the left has once again culminated in a massive, climate-shifting reaction across America. Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey – battlegrounds of the Revolution- have been recaptured by those who listen and don’t dictate. While the collectivists and “progressives” continue to make strides, their days are numbered.
The left’s most recent assault on America’s bedrock principals of self-determination and small government has jolted young and old from an apathy inspired by years of wealth accumulation and distant current events played through flickering television screens. Indeed, apathy is no longer an option.
Every day the true and traditional tenets of our country are spread as more men and women join the ranks of YAF. There are now over 300 university and regional chapters, from Puerto Rico to Alaska, with thousands of members across the country.
But as the young Conservative conscience of America reawakens, so too do its enemies. Even while a brave few work to expose the truth, the left’s allies in the news media flood the airways with accusations, dismissals and slurs.
To them, YAF says: Conservative anger against the Administration and the direction of this country is not racism- it is honest fear and concern. The Conservative movement is not orchestrated by evil, unseen corporate interests- it is genuine and driven by patriotism.
Love for the Constitution and individualism are not longing for a simpler past that is no longer possible- they are the only way to live in this land. Since the rise of communism and its cousin, fascism, a key tenet of the left has been that society had grown too intricate for men to rule themselves. This was not true then- nor is it now – nor will it ever be.
America cannot go the way of Europe. Americans have never needed to rely on a welfare state. On the contrary – the U.S. is proud to be the last great hope – the last defender of true liberty.
With these convictions held firm and dear, YAF remains committed to saving America from the direction in which we are headed – undaunted by even the harshest of criticism.
“The tide of Conservatism is rising all over the United States,” wrote a young Lee Edwards 49 years ago in YAF’s publication, The New Guard. “And we will rise with it leaving behind those unfortunates still chained to the rotting posts of ‘liberalism,’ collectivism and statism. If they wish to sacrifice themselves for a lost cause,” he continued, “let them do so. Nevertheless, we offer them the pincers of liberty, individualism and initiative to free themselves of chains as rusty as the shibboleths which undoubtedly our opponents will attempt to wrap around us,”
After a 17-year hiatus, The New Guard, vol. 34, num. 1, debuted at CPAC 2010 to much fanfare from new and devoted readers. As YAF continues to grow in prominence, activists are once again prepared to do battle with the enemies of freedom around the world and the proponents of socialism here at home.
Just as when YAF Founders Bill Buckley, M. Stanton Evans, Russell and Annette Kirk launched the modern Conservative movement from amongst domestic Keynesian fervor and the looming threat of Communism, we, in this new century, imperiled by fundamentalism and collectivism as we are, will revive the Revolution that carried Reagan to the White House. We will once again witness the beautiful retreat of the state as Conservative politicians deregulate industry, allowing it to succeed; route the advocates of world government, defending our sovereignty; confront enemies of liberty at home and abroad, making way for freedom; and work to support the working poor and old as entitlements are gently, but irreversibly, rolled back.
The challenges today, and the hurdles ahead, are great, but YAF moves forward always remembering that the coldest hour comes right before the dawn. Conservatives understand that the government won’t save us- there is nowhere else to turn but to ourselves. If we are successful, and I know we will be, America’s future is limitless. We are the men and women who will defend our civilization from the fall and prepare our country for the next American Century.
Christopher Bedford, 23, is on the national board for Young Americans for Freedom and is executive editor of The New Guard. He is a 2008 graduate of American University in Washington, DC, where he received his bachelor’s degree in written journalism with a minor in world politics. He has also reported and contributed to HSToday, The American Observer, The American University Eagle and Reader’s Digest, UK.
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