From the files of Ben Wetmore: "Confessions of a pro-life tagger"

NJO: "Benjamin Wetmore: A mentor of mine; a genius", said James O'Keefe in an interview in September 2009. So let's take a look at some of the wisdom of this certifiably mentorial influence on James' life.

Today, from September 2010, "Confessions of a pro-life tagger" (mirrored here)

Confessions from a Pro-Life Tagger

Running from the police is one of life's great joys. Or so I'm told. Hiding behind dumpsters, shedding clothing and evidence, trying to make the calm and cool getaway... a successful guerrilla operation is a rare and beautiful moment. Even more rare on an American college campus.

I'm getting ahead. We'll come back to the police.

There is a theory behind what is a "proper" liberal arts campus. The brick buildings, a holdover from nineteenth century architectural styles, provide an air of aloofness, dominion and detachment. The campus is stark. Scrubbed. Bleached. Sanitary. Airport modern. It resembles a hospital even in its sidewalks. Clean, white sidewalks. Posters advertise milquetoast affairs of special lectures and symphonic recitals. Even the ‘radicalism’ is chic, come hear the lecture on ‘white privilege’ or the essay on ‘institutional racism’ all contained within these scrubbed, bleached, sanitary modern walls.

The campus is small. Intimate. The paths between the dorms and the classrooms intersect, forcing students into interaction. Morris was founded with these ideals in mind. It is a special affair for the intelligent and gifted, the best in the Minnesota system. The honors student. There is an expected decorum held sacred by which all speech, must it happen at all, be bland and passionless. Intellectual. Rules, speech codes and administrative pressure are expected to keep the peace.

Such a model invites entropy. Such a model needs entropy.

In a poorly lit room, tucked away in one of those imposing brick structures, six individuals sit preparing to fuck the system. I'm one of them. This was a training exercise. Some off-campus leaders thought it necessary and decided to help out the local riffraff develop some guerrilla skills. We had started earlier, with small stuff. "Big R" was one of the off campus pros. "Little e" was the organizer, known for holding his knowledge close to the chest. Organizing guerrilla campaigns requires wavering attention spans and incoherent mumblings. Little e has mastered the art of comprehensible incomprehension. One pictures Lenin mumbling something about storming the gates, or Trotsky obliquely mentioning the advancing white guards.

We know Intellectuals Hate Capitalism. But Why?

JAMES O'KEEFE

How ironic is it that the hatred of capitalism is disproportionately composed of proletariat theorist professors who make over 100,000 dollars a year. Ironic also is the doctrince of socialism is an intellectual phenomenon, not a working class one, derived from these professor who reside in the top income bracket.

When the Federalist Papers were written, the property owners were the most educated. This is no longer the case. An entrepreneur has a practical intelligence, whereas the professor has a theoretical one and often distances himself away from the free market.

But why such capitalist loathing? Ludwig von Mises proposed the intellectuals are resentful of the few who make more money than they do; namely investment bankers, corporate lawyers, etc. Others say they intellectuals feel undervalued in a system which rewards for talent, individual initiative and personal merit, not intelligence.

Robert Nozick proposed the intellectuals derive their hate from their tensions in elementary school with other children. This is a theory we'll explore at another time. As Nozick says, intellectuals will likely have the last word, a form poetic justice that is anything but ironic.

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

Illiteracy Count: 8

1. How ironic is it...    (If the sentence is a statement, it should be "it is". If it's a question, it should have a question mark.)
2. doctrince
3. Ironic also is...    (The whole sentence is quite the fucking omnishambles, but perhaps some small vestige of life could have been restored to its abortion-like form by injecting "the fact that" after the first three words.)
4. these professor who
5. von Mises proposed the intellectuals    (Replace "the" with "that")
6. Others say they intellectuals    ("They intellectuals"? Is he from fucking Fife all of a sudden?)
7. Nozick proposed the intellectuals    (Replace "the" with "that")
8. a form poetic justice

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.