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.