Former Leftist Activist, Turned Leftist Informant, Pulls Back The Curtain On ACORN

Source: The archived page from biggovernment.com.

by Brandon Darby 
 
I first experienced ACORN in post-Katrina New Orleans. I was part of a relief organization, Common Ground Relief, which  had been delivering much needed aid to the 9^th Ward, an area that had been hit especially hard by the flood waters and by neglect. Rumors immediately began surfacing, questioning our motives and intentions. I was very confused by these rumors. Who was behind them? How could anyone question the vital work we were doing in the community?  We lived and worked in the 9^th Ward. We suspended our regular lives and, in many cases, left our families to travel to New Orleans to help those affected by Katrina and poverty. We slept on dirty plywood floors and shared everything we had with the residents.  Most of us were white. Was our skin color the issue? I knew from personal experience that the majority of the Black 9^th ward residents didn’t care what color our skin was. It took me awhile to get over the hurt I felt at such allegations and to find out where they were coming from.




In the following weeks, I was made aware of the fact that ACORN had reopened its New Orleans office (several months after the storm). Various groups from around the city informed me that Acorn was upset with us because we were in “their” community and had not sought approval from ACORN to operate there. I was told that ACORN said that we were “privileged white people who had come to a Black community as saviors and we refused to work with local Black leadership.”

The more I pondered the matter, the more I realized what was happening. As usual in marginalized and impoverished communities, a small group of radical self-proclaimed leaders was insisting that all local aid and relief came through them—even if they were AWOL for several months. Though the majority of residents either hadn’t heard of ACORN or simply disagreed with their politics- ACORN insisted that they were THE Black leaders. This was upsetting to me. Sure, the local pastor we worked most closely with was Black; but that didn’t matter to ACORN. It was as if Pastor Johnson didn’t count because he didn’t evoke the name of Elijah Mohammed or Malcolm X. It was as if Pastor Johnson didn’t count because he didn’t submit to ACORN’s mandate that ACORN was the sole leadership of Black New Orleanians.

As then director of Common Ground Relief’s 9th Ward project, I was warned by many that ACORN would ruin me politically if I didn’t submit to their leadership. I believed in what I was doing and how I was doing it. I refused to submit. The political fallout was almost unbearable. I just kept my eyes on meeting the needs of the community. When confronted by adherents to ACORN’s brand of race analysis, I pointed out that ACORN was not there immediately after the storm, so I could not have sought their leadership even if I had wanted to.

Over the following years, that particular style of political attack was prominent in New Orleans. Anytime that ACORN was displeased, the other party was deemed a racist. If the other party disagreed with the label or with ACORN’s agenda- they were met with “of course you feel that way. You are a racist.” Though it is clearly woefully inaccurate and unethical to use such an accusation as a political attack and as a means of shutting down philosophical debate and discourse, some at ACORN didn’t let that stop them. I refused to submit to it. I believed in listening to the majority of the community, who were desperate for our help, and not only to the self-proclaimed leaders. I paid a dear price for it.

I returned to Texas after a couple of years adminst the political quagmire of post-Katrina New Orleans. My experience there with various groups was educational and life-changing, though some of these groups concerned me. Eventually I began to see some of them as dangerous and deceitful about their missions. This, along with a growing appreciation of my country helped lead me to work with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

I was as proud of this new era in my life as I was of my time in New Orleans. I had the privilege of participating in efforts where lives were saved; both in the United States and in Israel. While working undercover with the FBI at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, I helped to uncover a bomb plot. Two men had made firebombs with a homemade napalm mixture of gasoline and oil. Their initial targets were Republican delegates. These bomb-makers (domestic terrorists) later decided to attack a staging area for the Secret Service and other law-enforcement agencies. Fortunately, they were stopped and arrested.

I was asked, and agreed, to testify against them. As was expected, the more radical elements of the media began to attack both me as an individual and the FBI as a whole. One of the men accused plead guilty; the other hired an expensive defense attorney and concocted a story about the FBI building these bombs to “set up left-wing activists” and stop dissent. But once the facts became clear, the defense changed their story and instead tried to blame the FBI for ”influencing” the terrorists. Thankfully, after one hung jury and many months of intense media attacks against me, the other bomb-maker (domestic terrorist) decided to come clean and admitted to the judge that he had invented the whole story.

What does any of this have to do with ACORN? I wondered the same thing on January 31^st of 2009 when I was reading an ACORN blog that is run by Wade Rathke (the man who claims credit for founding ACORN). He devoted an entire page to my work with the FBI. How did he describe the FBI’s effort and success in preventing innocent Americans, local police and federal agents from being burned, maimed and/or possibly killed by firebombs? He wrote that it’s “one thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks.”  That is what ACORN’s founder had to say about my role in stopping a bomb plot.

I was even more shocked as I continued reading the article. ACORN’s “founder” went on to mention that another self-proclaimed “radical” activist who had worked closely with him was also involved in my story. Her name is Lisa Fithian. I first encountered Ms. Fithian in New Orleans. She came to town after Common Ground Relief had started operations. She assumed a position of prominence and continuously challenged my work and leadership. During the RNC bombing trial, she cooperated with the defense of the bomb plotters and led media attacks on me and the FBI.

Ms. Fithian has been quoted in various mainstream news articles as saying, “Nonviolence is a strategy. Civil disobedience is a tactic,” and “Direct action is a strategy. Throwing rocks is a tactic.” She is also quoted as stating that “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, ‘I create crisis’, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”

ACORN receives tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers to promote their agenda. Free speech is sacred, of course. However, it is clear that ACORN has made a practice of blurring the lines between free speech and tax-payer-funded activism. Fortunately, our federal government is adept at investigating and identifying the misuse of federal funds. It will be interesting in the near future to see how Mr. Rathke and his ACORN associates stand up to the same scrutiny they have focused on our military, the FBI and other governmental groups and agencies.

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Tags: Common Ground Relief, FBI, Katrina, Lisa Fithian, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Ninth Ward, RNC, Wade Rathke
Posted Sep 12th 2009 at 4:48 pm in ACORN, Featured Story | Comments (371)

I Have a Dream

Much has changed since the time of Edmund Burke. While prudence, honor, restraint, reverence, self-discipline, liberty and conviction will always be conservative, modern “conservative” declarations seem to directly contradict these classical virtues. There is no better time than now to explore how these themes have changed and how these virtues clash. This is a time when Peter Lawler believes the Republicans will become two parties split between anti-libertarians and libertarians. Former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy is the neo-conservative version of the Declaration of Independence; calling for the promotion of democracy for oppressed people’s throughout the world. Fiscally, our Republican allies are anything but conservative. As the Wall Street tycoon once said, “our trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions.”

But our universities are also at a crossroads, becoming what David French calls "islands of repression in a sea of liberty." Professors have seemed to have figured out answers to all of life’s great questions. The Academy is, without a doubt, the left’s last vast impenetrable fortress. It is an ideological monopoly on truth, which, as Victor Davis Hansen has said, “has adopted a therapeutic curriculum in pursuit of political objectives.” The pseudo-religious rhetoric of “diversity” has replaced the great rhetorical social questions of Plato and Aristotle; the relationship between God and man, virtue and vice, heroism and cowardice, and beauty and wisdom. These questions have been replaced with an obsession, not of veritas, but with skin color.

Rutgers Professors and staff gave 104 times more money to John Kerry than George W. Bush in the 2004 election cycyle. One Hundred and Four to One. This ratio is comparable to the political diversity present under the rule of Genghis Khan.

In our beloved Academy; a supposed citadel of intellectual brilliance, its commanding officers have become intellectual sloths; unchallenged by any principled conservative opposition and unbridled to invite speakers to campus to compare Bush to the Ku Klux Klan, or rant about how the war to liberate the middle east is morally bad in a class completely unrelated to international relations or its relating philosophies.

From a journalistic standpoint, THE CENTURION is an avowedly conservative magazine. We implore our detractors who demand political balance to weigh us on the scale against other student publications including The Medium, the Green Print, The Review and The Caellian. Let’s not forget The Daily Targum, a newspaper from which I was once fired. Worry not my Leftists; the academic fulcrum still tips in favor of you; if not in print (we’ll take this potential newfound conservative leaning as a testament to our success), then decidedly so in the classroom. THE CENTURION arrived on the scene last November to a blazing fire, extinguishing it with guerilla tactics; awards on doors, sensitivity complaints, racist cereals and needed muckraking against local political cronyism. This sardonic approach seems to have had more efficacy and influence on our student body which cares as much about truth as Muslims care about Jesus.

On our campus common sense is blurred by obfuscation; the p.c. patrol, the diversity police, the self-esteem deans, the speech codes, and the professors violating core tenets of academic freedom, etc.

I founded THE CENTURION because I have a dream...

I have a dream where diversity refers to more than just the melanin in one’s skin; where conservatives are not to be called “fascists” for advocating pluralities of methodologies, perspectives and common sense views.

I have a dream that Lucky Charms is thought of as a breakfast cereal rather than a symbol of Leprechaun oppression.

I have a dream where the banning of “offensive” Grease Trucks sandwich names is of little consequence compared to the rapes of women off campus.

I have a dream someone realizes Rutgers’ financial woes just might be due to dozens of committees and caucuses “devoted to advancing our common purposes” as well as pork programs and counselors and their Deans that believe self-esteem is more important than the process by which you earn it.

I have a dream where we realize guns are no more responsible for Columbine than spoons are responsible for Michael Moore’s obesity.

I have a dream where we lay our presents under Christmas Trees, not holiday shrubs.

I have a dream at least one building or program or committee or scholarship will be named after our Rutgers’ Nobel peace prize winning graduate Milton Friedman, RC ’32. His axiom that political freedom requires economic freedom is a lesson learned only by visiting the graves of the innocent women and children butchered to death by bloodthirsty tyrants; economic atrocities condoned by the applause of Paul Robeson's supporters.

I have a dream where bureaucrats, uneducated in matters relating to life’s great questions, stop putting restrictions on what I can or can’t say, stop enacting policies that arbitrarily prohibit behavior, and stop making value judgments on what I believe.

I have a dream where conservative faculty are free from ideological witch hunts; where political opinions and/or skin color is prohibited from being considered in the hiring of university professors.

I have a dream where the unfair employment practices and accusations against one of our nations most gifted sociobiologists because of his conservative leaning, is prosecuted by the fullest extent of the law.

I have a dream where they will introduce a biology prerequisite for women’s studies classes.

For we the conservatives, ironically, have become the modern day Henry David Thoreaus, albeit in a less revolutionary way. For we, the silent majority, “stand athwart history yelling stop” in a place and at a time when our professors and peers call for radical change.

None of us knew each other a year ago. A man I considered my best friend last year betrayed me over chalk yielding, gown wearing overly ambitious students buying into their own hype. I have met others since then. The unappreciated wisdom of the encyclopedic Wesley James Young; whose civility is only matched by his compassion. The southern legal language of Jeff Erickson. The untapped artistic genius and patience of Justine Mertz. The editorial prowess of my successor, Dan Whitney, who spent late nights (and their accompanying early mornings) at production meetings curbing his enthusiasm, as well as the timely alarm on his wristwatch. The honor in Alan Marrero’s eyes. The steadfast morale of Greg Walker. The Enigmatic Matt Klimek, consummate but withdrawn...

We publish onward, not in the name of our friendship, but for the love of our cause. We have nothing to offer but a slightly naïve, scant knowledge of modern conservatism from our readings in outside publications, books and recently, online journals. The intellectual sloths and anonymous cowards at the pulpit in the ivory tower at Rutgers who read this sentiment will post on their blogs, with relief, our efforts are not nearly enough to dethrone them! For we do not have the required experience, cannot battle student apathy and have not read as much third-rate Marxist hogwash.

But our superior ideas have been time tested, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, victorious in the world of reality strife-torn by a century plagued by revolution. Our naiveté is offset by our courage, bound not for each other but for our cause on a campus that unites in condemning us. I have been hated more in the last year of my life than in the past 20 years of my existence combined, and most likely more hated than you readers. And if that seems somewhat dramatic, you’re damn right it is. So entrenched are we in our cause, Matt, Justine and I forfeited characteristics of coyness and prudence long after we received the anonymous death threats, to prove a point that we weren’t even certain would turn out to be effective.

Transcending all of this; we decided to do something about which we cared. We challenged people to see our version of the truth. It is my contention we have succeeded.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us about the hottest thing in town.

James O'Keefe

Originally printed in the December 2005 issue of the Centurion.

Inside the Mind of the Rutgers Professor, Part VI: Equality

Equality

The decline of the Rutgers man (“man” being used to denote male or female human). There is no such thing as a “Rutgers Man” anymore. There is no such thing as a renaissance man. Rutgers does not produce gentlemen as well as scholars, does not shape students anymore, at least not in the way it should. While professors play the role of brainwashers, the administration promotes a form of sensitive homogeneity, using academic methods like “creative ambiguity,” where both sides strongly disagree but come to mutual agreement. The administration’s focus is primarily on skin color, ethnicity and non-western religions. The colorblind demands of the civil rights movement have mutated into the color consciousness of today. Since professors believe that all civilization and culture come directly from race and we are all created equal, the Rutgers anthropologist believes all civilizations and cultures are created equal. The Professor has become so obsessed with race, he will often ignore an argument, instead making ad hominem attacks on the basis of the arguer’s race or social status only. Professor James Livingston of the Rutgers History Department, a self-described “Marxist, Socialist, Feminist and Pragmatic Postmodernist,” made such attacks against the editors of The Centurion last fall, accusing the paper of “White Hysteria.” (Professor James Livingston is a white man who makes around 100,000 dollars a year).

Statewide Affirmative Action mandates demanding quotas on race have produced a segregated campus. Livingston College for blacks and Hispanics. Rutgers College for whites. White students are contemptuous of black students and athletes with lower admissions standards and doubt their merits, even though they deny doing so. Attempts to level the playing field bring standards down. English Professor William Dowling has spoken of the decline of academic standards and demanded the university return to its traditional, historical roots. Dr. Dowling has also published a list of works that are considered the great English Classics. In an August 25, 2003 article in Sports Illustrated, he pointed to a football player named Nate Robinson who was accepted into Rutgers with a combined SAT score of 800.

The University wanted none of it.

The “Academic Oversight Committee” demonized Dowling in a Targum column later in September, where they accused Dowling of calling football players “morons.” One student, then Rutgers College sophomore John Little, resorted to an ad hominem attack and accused Dowling of being a “racist.” His April 24th, 2001 quote (for Dowling’s 2003 article was not the first in which he questioned the University’s acquisition of sports players) about Dowling embodies much of the Marxist philosophy: “Professor Dowling only recognizes one style of learning. One leftover from the days when only the wealthy could attend college. Not all students can achieve academically in a typical classroom setting, thus making athletics, drama or art a valuable tool in the teaching process. The lessons that these activities teach students are numerous and every bit as valuable as anything is that can by learned in the classroom.”

The white Rutgers students, faculty and Administration feel uncomfortable talking about campus segregation between the colleges. They do not like it because it does not fit in their prevailing view that all the races get along and their university has become fully integrated, when in fact is has not.

What results is a barrage of aesthetic “diversity” reassurance and sensitivity training. There are dozens of caucuses, programs and councils to beat the importance of skin color and multicultural sensitivity into the segregated students minds. Diversityweb.rutgers.edu says all Rutgers students needs to be welcomed, valued and respected,” but the administration’s plans to emphasize distinct “cultures” (races) only promotes hostility between them. Heck, there is even an Institute for Executive Leadership and Diversity (http://diversity.rutgers.edu) at Rutgers University. At an “Algeria” award conference for Rutgers College student organizations on May 3rd, 2005, more than half of the awards were for cultural organizations, lauding skin color and little else. The Centurion was peculiarly absent from the “Excellence in Student Media” award ceremony.

NJO: Originally printed in the September 2005 issue of The Centurion.

Dear Freshmen, ahem... "First-Year-Students"

A year ago, this publication did not exist. Since then we have violated 37 copyrights in our satire of The New York Times, done a review of the most decorated liberal professor doors, investigated the rampant fiscal and electoral corruption of NJPIRG, documented our speech code, and investigated faculty contributions to political parties to find out professors gave 104 times more money to John F. Kerry than George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. We have exposed the Stalinism of Rutgers favorite son, Paul Robeson, and printed the appropriate forms to relinquish your United States Citizenship if you are ashamed of your American identity. Additionally, we have filed a “bias incident report form” on one student who wrote “Die” all over one of our issues. We sent Valentines to NJPIRG requesting our money be refunded while documenting threats made to us by our old faculty advisor who told us “not to f*** with him.” We investigated our bureaucracy to find over 33 distinct offices, committees, programs, projects, caucuses and councils that advance nothing but diversity of skin color. As a response to Campus Censorship of the Grease Trucks' sandwiches, we attempted to ban Lucky Charms from the dining halls in a form of satirical protest. We, tragically, succeeded. And we got it on tape. We interviewed Bret Schundler for Governor and confronted a Professor who chased a student out of his classroom because he disagreed with the professor’s worldviews. We responded to the "Vagina Monologues" with the “Penis Monologues.” At Tent State, we counter-protested with patriotic country music and an affirmative action bake sale where we sold brownies for less money to minority customers. Students signed our petition to ban water. Anarchist ninjas assaulted us when we told them about the state scandals. Professors have tried to expel us when we exposed their lies, and the administration has disavowed us when we printed the truth. We have been assaulted, betrayed, and, at times, ignored. But we will never surrender in our pursuit to challenge the academic monopoly of thought. We will never surrender at trying to get students to look at both sides of an issue. We will never surrender in upholding our motto, Veritas vos Liberabit.

Read on.      - THE EDITORS

NJO: Originally printed in the September 2005 issue of The Centurion.

Affirmative Action Bake Sale

Uploaded on Aug 27, 2009

So, at our annual Affirmative Action bake sale, we came across an inner city teacher visiting Rutgers with her class. Naturally, a discussion ensued about the merits of Affirmative Action. Who do you think won?

Uploaded on May 3, 2009

Inner city teacher loses debate to conservatives over the workings of Affirmative Action.

NJO: Videos and captions from the RUCenturion YouTube channel.

Original caption from rucenturion.com: 

Inner-city teacher shows children how to debate a conservative and lose.

Some photos of said conservatives at their bake sale table:

Additional information at these links:
Feel-good complacency or direct action? The lessons of Tent State Rutgers
Homophobic vigilantes chased from TSU Rutgers

The Conservative Manifesto - Part III

A spectre is haunting Rutgers — the spectre of conservatism. All of the powers of the ivory tower (Rutgers) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: “diversity” proponents, speech-code advocates, multiculturalists, feminist radicals, and your professors.

Where is the student that has not been decried as “conservative” by the liberals in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of conservatism, against the more advanced liberal ideology at Rutgers, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Conservatism is already acknowledged by Rutgers to be itself a power.
II. It is time that Conservatives should openly, in the face of all their professors, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of conservatism with a manifesto of the ideology itself.

To this end, I have assembled the following manifesto, to be published in THE CENTURION:

A conservative believes in natural rights. A conservative believes in natural rights; those rights endowed to human beings by their creator. They believe in a system of government ordained around truths that are self-evident. Furthermore, he does not believe “No culture’s way of life is better than another,” as anthropologist Theodosious Dobzhansky has argued. Allan Bloom claims in his book The Closing of the American Mind that America promises, “the untrammeled freedom to reason,” and
therefore the highest achievement of truth and self-actualization. Conservatives are guilty of the sin of pride. We are proud of our nation and its values. We would rather study the political philosophies of freedom, justice, and liberty by John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Hobbes which have inspired generations of prosperity. We choose not to buy into the political philosophies of conflict theory and revolution by Marx or Mao which have inspired only genocide. A conservative is not afraid to tell the multiculturalists and western intellectuals that ridding the world of genital mutilation, infanticide, religious discrimination, patriarchy, cannibalism, forced abortions and corrupt dictators is not “culturally imperialistic,” or “ethnocentric.” It is rather our civic duty to our fellow man.

A conservative believes in objective truth. A conservative professes external order. He is firmly opposed to relativism's claims that truth is relative to the eye of the beholder, or claims that it is contextually constructed. He defends his view that there exists an outside truth by pointing out that disagreement doesn’t entail interminability, that there are undeniable facts like “the world is round,” and if there was no ethical or moral truth, then there would be no distinction in virtue between Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler. A conservative believes strongly in virtue: pursuing the good life for man for its own sake. He also beliefs in family and the traditions ordained in the family. Discipline, faith, self-confidence, personal responsibility and conviction are essential in all of man’s pursuits.

A conservative believes in limited government. “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem” (Ronald Reagan). While law enforcement, basic education and maintenance of infrastructure are all necessary, the government does not have a good track record in succeeding at what it sets out to do. He knows this for two reasons. One, government is not some distinct, almighty, independent moral entity; rather it is comprised of human beings with all the innate characteristics and corrupt susceptibilities that affect those “evil” corporations and masses of ignorant citizens it attempts to govern. Second, government operated programs fail economically, because unlike profit, there is no measurable end to determine the level of achievement. The conservative prefers the alternative of privatization; private ownership of the means of production. Privatization is more successful that its government counterpart because it is vastly more efficient, self-regulating, and cost-effective. Examples of successful areas of privatization the conservative points to include health care, social security, mail delivery, prison operation, etc. While Norwegian president accused the United States government of being “stingy” with the tsunami relief effort and other charitable contributions, private United States companies had already donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the effort as well as to other charities worldwide.

Prosperity, incentive, free market, growth, human fulfillment and the pursuit of happiness are created from the bottom up, not the government down. He believes that a free-market will lead towards human prosperity and happiness. While doomsdayers and naysayers warn that overpopulation is due to prosperity, the exact opposite is true. The most industrialized places on earth have a birth rate far below what is needed to maintain their population.

Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success — only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free, and only then can human beings achieve happiness. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.

A conservative is Politically Incorrect. A conservative reveals the facts regardless of whose feelings get hurt. He acknowledges there are differences between the sexes. He knows what a statistical bell curve is, and understands that an outlier or exception cannot disprove a rule, sin qua non. He is against language reform and other futile and aesthetic attempts to soften reality by calling toilet paper “bathroom tissue,” freshmen “first-year-students,” and more recently Christmas trees “trees of giving.” A conservative does his best to act rather than talk and does his best not to get caught up in names, labels, and terminologies. Buzzwords like “inclusion,” “tolerance,” and “diversity” are racist, hypocritical, and exclusive to, as Leo Strauss said, “those who have stated clearly and forcefully there are unchangeable standards founded in the nature of man and the nature of things.”

A conservative believes in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. That being said, he is strongly opposed to racism. He recognizes there are many human beings who lack opportunities. But current programs that institutionalize racial consciousness, like affirmative action, must be reformed on the ground that they encourage racial identity, promote suspicion of minority success, and violate civil rights by putting skin color before character. Racism is most prevalent in college admissions where skin color alone determines how one acts and thinks. In some cases, race is all that matters. “Diversity” becomes nothing but skin tone. One’s desires, intellect and even background become irrelevant. The postmodernists, whose philosophy is founded upon fragmentation, assume skin color alone can determine how one acts and thinks, therefore bringing a range of perspectives. Conservatives suggest an alternative program based solely on socioeconomic need. Such an alternative would bring diversity of economic backgroun and benefit minorities because, as the left itself confesses, a disproportionate amount are “socioeconomically disadvantaged.” A conservative is against “identity politics” and racial pride movements on the grounds that they too identify and polarize skin color. The conservative recognizes that since the 1960’s, activists have shifted their cause from civil rights to racial identity, a cause which will serve as an impediment to racial equality.

- James O'Keefe

NJO: Originally published in The Daily Targum in 2004 and later printed in Issue 3 of The Centurion in February 2005.

A Dose of Conservative Thought

Where is the truth?

Certainly it is not in some obscure interpretation of Marx's Capital or in the works of Trotsky or Spinoza or Friedrich Engels, Clement Atlee, Julius Nyerere or Noam Chomsky. Maybe it lies within the graves of the human beings slaughtered throughout the 20th century coerced into being equal by a government of armed thugs they didn't have a choice but to trust. Complete state ownership and collective ownership have both lead themselves down a path of good intentions to a hell so barbaric it's amazing rationalizations for their existence still exist. Especially given the empirical evidence. Your professors make the death list a cliché, a footnote and in some cases, even an impediment. Mao Zedong's butchering of 65 million people. 25 million in Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia slaughtered. Cambodia. Africa. Eastern Europe. Latin America. Your professors can hide behind textbooks and theories – even the promise of a socialist utopia – call the atrocities anti-socialist. (I could call racism anti-American and anti constitutional.) The Problem lies in their belief in this mysterious utopia which has never manifested itself ever. A belief which makes them more religious than Pat Robertson. In order to succeed, even in theory, they must confront arguments made by F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises about the inevitable failure of a controlled market. Have professors had their students read objections to socialism by Aron, Popper, Oakeshott, Sowell, Strauss, Blool, Kirk or Friedman? Absolutely not. Are your professors constituting a breach in academic responsibility by not offering you these extremely legitimate and historically proven objections to socialism? You betcha.

Have arguments been raised against these "utopian" paradises that currently exist on the planet earth anywhere at in the Academy? What about Sweden? Is this place heaven on earth or what? "Highest Standard of Living," they say. This tidbit seems to be based on wealth redistribution and median income. Not factored in are GNP, innovation or exchange rate. Neither is unemployment in the private sector (which has been close to 12%). Recent reports by the Swedish Institute of Trade indicate median income in Sweden is $26,900, compared to $39,400 in the United States. This is before taxes, and in Sweden taxes are everything. You're education and health care are certainly not "free." There is a national income tax of 55% not to mention a 22.5% sales tax on all items sold. Their socialized health care is on the verge of economic collapse, due to a funding dependency on a 30% private ownership of the means of production that is shrinking. Canada is facing similar problems. Meeting the costs of such welfare policies are barely possible in countries with 10 million people. Then how are they possible in America, with almost 300 million people?

I have seen students at the "Death of Humanity" rally as well as the extremist left-leaning conferences held throughout the month at Rutgers not address any of these objections. Should it be the responsibility of a couple of undergraduate students at THE CENTURION to challenge them? No. It should be the responsibility of Rutgers University. Professors should openly discuss both sides of the ideological coin as well as the benefits of electing both candidates for a presidential election (Especially if Students fees are sponsoring such conferences). In addition, our administration should pursue academic, conservative intellectuals to come speak who can pose defenses for our market structure, instead of conservative talking heads like Ann Coulter. It is the least they can do, if as our study indicates, the partisan ratio at Rutgers is a high as 13 Democrats to every 1 Republican.

Our Journal of conservative thought focuses upon the Rutgers Community and seeking balance within it as well as taking a stab at the current events. We recommend for students who want a conservative perspective devoted exclusively to current events read the impeccable prose of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal or the columns of the National Review. Perhaps read one of the books we occasionally suggest. The differences between us and these other journals is our distinction of having the luxury of covering things that happen on our campus. By virtue of our firm belief in individualism, morality, and tradition our main goal is to challenge the students to see things through a different perspective.

Contrary to the sentiments of the angry and reactionary academic left, we are not on a coalition against benevolent causes like supporting of the environment and the need for racial equality. Our logic dictates that affirmative action programs should be based on socioeconomic need, not skin color. The majority of our student fees allocated from us towards NJPIRG, if collected from us without our informed consent, should go directly towards environmental causes. They should not go towards liberal lobbyists who pursue things other than the environment. We will attempt place needed scrutiny upon policies such as these because others seem not to for fear of some politically correct reprisal. Why call these arguments "racist" or "pro-pollution" when they could actually increase opportunity and decrease pollution, based on an increase in efficiency?

So you may very easily reject our humble attempts at introducing you to new perspectives. Laugh at us. Mock us. Call us "clueless." Our own faculty advisor did so in his December 1st entry of his weblog listed in the margin below. But in doing so, you'd just be rejecting yourself. Because our paper is not just a collection of legitimate or illegitimate points about particular political issues, rather it is the embodiment of the spirit of marginalized and isolated conservative students whose beliefs have much in common with the majority of citizens in the United States of America. Rutgers has an unchallenged partisan majority as witnessed in our study of campaign contributions. This threatens the impressionable youth who will soon depart the ivory gates of unregulated intellectualism into a real world, where contrary to the teachings of their sociology professors, anything is possible.

There is a world out there where is punishment for people who do bad things and there is no such thing as a free lunch. There is a world out there where your theories will be governed by consequences, your hard work rewarded by success and your destiny contingent upon your actions. Because that section of the world we live in is America, our potential as human beings is infinite.

And that is the truth.

James O'Keefe

NJO: Originally printed in the December 2004 issue of The Centurion (Issue 2) and also posted on the Centurion website.