The truth shall set you free
General George Patton once said "When everyone is
thinking the same, no one is thinking at all." Throughout my life, in
all my pursuits of obtaining knowledge, the one thing that has
stimulated me most has been a good challenge. Everyone is in agreement
that the only way to learn is through constant stimulation.
Conservatives and traditionalists are in this respect very fortunate in
college. They are challenged. They learn material through postmodernism,
historical revisionism and the plight
of the disenfranchised. The are forced to disect morality and examine
the ethical obligations of the West. They are lectured
about the injustices and struggles of those who have been victim of
systems favorable to those in power. They are
drowned in relativism, concepts of distributive justice and
redistribution of wealth. They are taught that there is no such
thing as truth and you are not allowed to make judgments upon anyone or
anything, except America. They are taught to
be sensitive and defensive, emphasizing artifice and political
correctness over fact. For Rutgers students who have not
taken any classes in the liberal arts, look no further than your
mandatory Expository
Writing course. You read about the evils of capitalism and the gluttony
of America. You
read about the corruption of the elections processes which elect
diplomatic morons.
You learned about the consequences of globalization, the need for
cultural contexts and the corruption of an all men's
institution discriminating against women. Liberals are very unfortunate
in college. They aren't really challenged at all.
Have advocates for progress with an alleged pursuit of tolerance ever
attempted to understand or listen to their
conservative counterparts, the same way they tell their America to
listen to their political enemies? Have they been forced to
read the Nobel Peace Prize winning works of free enterprise by Milton
Friedman (A Rutgers graduate) or Friedrich Hayek the
same way I have been forced to read the communist works of Karl Marx?
Have they studied Ayn Rand's objectivism,
Edmund Burke's belief in "sound practice" or William F. Buckley's "Up
from Liberalism?" Do they see they are living
in the most fruitful and prosperous country in the world, admiring
egalitarian systems that in 20 th century have lead to
more barbaric cruelty, famine and death than any privileged American
intellect could ever fathom? Have those in academia
been challenged morally? Have they studied the principles that this
country was founded upon? Have they studied
principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality, and truly
compared them to the principles of other societies?
Why, in a country that is at least half conservative, do we not have
this ratio represented in higher learning? Some will
say conservatives shouldn't have a right to express themselves. Some say
principles of limited government,
personal responsibility or of an objective standard are flat out wrong.
In the words of Michael Moore, "let's have that debate."
But let's not have it through the filter of a professor who has endorsed
a certain candidate or who always comes from a
certain ideological perspective. Let Rutgers be a place as President
McCormick envisioned in his Inaugural Address
"where there is tolerance for the student who challenges the professor's
ideas." If our arguments are so flawed, so unsound
and so problematic, then let us expose them for everyone to criticize.
Then we will rest our case.
There is nothing academic about an ideological majority. There is
nothing liberal about a monopoly of thought, nothing
enlightening about blatant partisan endorsement, and nothing equitable
about discriminating against conservative students
and professors because their beliefs are different than your own.
Rutgers is a diverse research university with a goal not
only to represent the citizens of New Jersey, but views and theories
from all over the country and the world. More
importantly, it is an academic institution that pursues something even
deeper, beyond knowledge or ideology, beyond the
rhetoric of a debate.
"Sol Iustate et occidentem Illustra." "Sun of
righteousness
shine upon the west also." For the past 200 years and to this day
Rutgers lives by that motto. Give us virtue,
give us justice, give us truth. So read about our truth to challenge
yourself politically in the
process. Find out that although we go about it differently, we are in
pursuit of the same things
you are. Disguising truth has helped every blood-thirsty tyrant and
dictator keep the shackles on humanity
throughout history. Let us rock the foundations of academia and
challenge the thrones that have for too long indoctrinated
us about our world and the context in which we live. As the Journal of
Conservative thought at Rutgers university THE
CENTURION will try its hardes to serve to that end. Turn the page. You
may read things you agree with and you may read
things that you disagree with. But at least you'll come closer to
realizing your own truth, and in the words of Jesus Christ,
"The truth shall set you free."
Cordially,
James O'Keefe
Founder, Editor-in-Chief
THE CENTURION
Veritas Vos Liberabit
NJO: Originally printed in the November 2004 issue of The Centurion (Issue 1) and also posted on the Centurion website.
So, some perspective.
James and some other students have just started a conservative-leaning college magazine. You pick up a copy of this new magazine, and right there on the front cover, James is telling you that if you get an abortion from an unregulated and unsafe practitioner and as a consequence suffer some horrible bodily harm which causes you to die, then as far as he's concerned it's really all a bit of a giggle because fuck you you dirty whore. It gets your attention in a trollish sort of way, so you turn to page 3, and you read the editorial above.
What are you supposed to think?
