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?