I'm getting to this a couple weeks after you posted it, but I want to put in a vote for your exhuming whatever you wrote about the anti-war movement, and maybe connecting it to what you have to say here about political education on the Right. You might have seen Zeynep Tufekci's piece in the NYT the other day (Sept 21) about how the anti-war movement has been out-played by university administrations. I think her verdict has to be filed under "Sad but True." And the explanation lies with the very thing you discuss in this post: the anti-war movement has been outmaneuvered because right-wing institutions are part of the maneuver.
It's really incredible to watch left students get their asses so thoroughly kicked by their right-wing antagonists, partly for lack of funding, partly for lack of support, partly for lack of experience, partly for lack of training. But all of those problems are remediable. The remedies can basically be read off the descriptions of the problems themselves. But remedies aren't free. They have to be paid for.
I'm a failed product of right-wing political education. I was one of Hazony's minions at The Princeton Tory. I attended all of IEA's shin-digs with the likes of Fred Barnes, William Buckley, Charles Kesler, Alan Keyes et al in DC. I had a three-year internship at the National Association of Scholars. I went out to dinner with the likes of Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol. I rubbed shoulders with the likes of Greg Johnson, one of the founders of the alt-right. Etc. I'm describing, not bragging. It's nothing to brag about.
I eventually went in a more libertarian-than-conservative direction, toward the Institute for Humane Studies at GMU (where I was the recipient of a 1994 summer fellowship). Twenty-six years of academic life turned me toward the Left, and made me persona non grata at all of these places. But I learned one lesson from it all: you get what you pay for. If you don't want to put the effort into building something, don't cry when nothing gets built.
It really astonishes me to see how myopic the Left is on this, BISR excepted. They've had forty years to figure out the Right's playbook. It's been right there in front of their eyes the whole time. It's no secret. But anyone who can see it should be able to reverse-engineer it.
For all the bullshit they sling about how "marginalized" they are, there is a direct connection between elite universities and cushy right-wing sinecures just about everywhere in government and other places of influence. When I was a lecturer at Princeton in 2002-2004, I taught within the James Madison Program, and regularly wrote letters of rec for right-wing students going places--the White House, the State Dept, etc. etc. That doesn't happen by accident.
I live in Princeton and am on campus every day. The poor, helpless, marginalized conservatives of the James Madison Program essentially own intellectual life here. They've deliberately invested in creating an intellectual infrastructure, and now they have one. I saw that play out at Princeton (where I was an undergrad), and then at Notre Dame (grad school). Who do these people think they're fooling?
They seem to be fooling the Left. We're living in a country sliding into fascism, committing genocide, and courting nuclear war. But the Left--the monied Left--seems to be sleepwalking through it all. Fifteen Princeton students are making their way through the courts on bullshit charges of defiant trespass. Who's following that case? An undergraduate intern at National Review. And that's just a small fraction of all of the students who were arrested this spring. Why is this not a cause celebre? Why is this not the equivalent of the Freedom Rides or Freedom Summer? Why are Left organizations not lining up to defend them, or at least expressing some real anger at their treatment?
A movement can't move itself. It's not a Prime Mover Unmoved out of Aristotelian cosmology. It needs support, or else it will die. I don't know how any of us will live with ourselves if the anti-war movement dies on our watch. But that's where it's headed. We're at Code Blue.
I'm getting to this a couple weeks after you posted it, but I want to put in a vote for your exhuming whatever you wrote about the anti-war movement, and maybe connecting it to what you have to say here about political education on the Right. You might have seen Zeynep Tufekci's piece in the NYT the other day (Sept 21) about how the anti-war movement has been out-played by university administrations. I think her verdict has to be filed under "Sad but True." And the explanation lies with the very thing you discuss in this post: the anti-war movement has been outmaneuvered because right-wing institutions are part of the maneuver.
It's really incredible to watch left students get their asses so thoroughly kicked by their right-wing antagonists, partly for lack of funding, partly for lack of support, partly for lack of experience, partly for lack of training. But all of those problems are remediable. The remedies can basically be read off the descriptions of the problems themselves. But remedies aren't free. They have to be paid for.
I'm a failed product of right-wing political education. I was one of Hazony's minions at The Princeton Tory. I attended all of IEA's shin-digs with the likes of Fred Barnes, William Buckley, Charles Kesler, Alan Keyes et al in DC. I had a three-year internship at the National Association of Scholars. I went out to dinner with the likes of Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol. I rubbed shoulders with the likes of Greg Johnson, one of the founders of the alt-right. Etc. I'm describing, not bragging. It's nothing to brag about.
I eventually went in a more libertarian-than-conservative direction, toward the Institute for Humane Studies at GMU (where I was the recipient of a 1994 summer fellowship). Twenty-six years of academic life turned me toward the Left, and made me persona non grata at all of these places. But I learned one lesson from it all: you get what you pay for. If you don't want to put the effort into building something, don't cry when nothing gets built.
It really astonishes me to see how myopic the Left is on this, BISR excepted. They've had forty years to figure out the Right's playbook. It's been right there in front of their eyes the whole time. It's no secret. But anyone who can see it should be able to reverse-engineer it.
For all the bullshit they sling about how "marginalized" they are, there is a direct connection between elite universities and cushy right-wing sinecures just about everywhere in government and other places of influence. When I was a lecturer at Princeton in 2002-2004, I taught within the James Madison Program, and regularly wrote letters of rec for right-wing students going places--the White House, the State Dept, etc. etc. That doesn't happen by accident.
I live in Princeton and am on campus every day. The poor, helpless, marginalized conservatives of the James Madison Program essentially own intellectual life here. They've deliberately invested in creating an intellectual infrastructure, and now they have one. I saw that play out at Princeton (where I was an undergrad), and then at Notre Dame (grad school). Who do these people think they're fooling?
They seem to be fooling the Left. We're living in a country sliding into fascism, committing genocide, and courting nuclear war. But the Left--the monied Left--seems to be sleepwalking through it all. Fifteen Princeton students are making their way through the courts on bullshit charges of defiant trespass. Who's following that case? An undergraduate intern at National Review. And that's just a small fraction of all of the students who were arrested this spring. Why is this not a cause celebre? Why is this not the equivalent of the Freedom Rides or Freedom Summer? Why are Left organizations not lining up to defend them, or at least expressing some real anger at their treatment?
A movement can't move itself. It's not a Prime Mover Unmoved out of Aristotelian cosmology. It needs support, or else it will die. I don't know how any of us will live with ourselves if the anti-war movement dies on our watch. But that's where it's headed. We're at Code Blue.