October 17, 2012
Dear Friends:
I
t is not surprising that Americans seem eager for change in Washington after four years of the weakest economic recovery in modern American history, “Taxageddon” staring us in the face, and endless efforts to divide our nation by race and class. Even so, I have been surprised by how many conservatives tell me the only event they are concerned about right now is November’s election results. Well, Young America’s Foundation’s mission is not to win the next election. It is profoundly more important; our mission is to win the next generation. In fact, I would contend that an exclusive obsession over an election guarantees we lose our freedoms because there will be endless waves of poorly educated candidates waiting for the next set of elections. It is naïve to blame the dire threat to our freedoms on a singular figure. You see, Barack Obama is not the product of America’s election cycle. He is the product of America’s education system—specifically our colleges and universities. What you may find troublesome in Washington today is a direct outgrowth of higher education’s preoccupation, for more than a generation, with race, class, and gender. Those themes have been preached—to the exclusion of rewarding merit, individual freedom, and the American dream—at colleges including Occidental, Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. These institutions shaped Barack Obama. Conservatives were too preoccupied with past elections to ensure students at those schools adequately considered freedom’s merits. Bad results were inevitable. An election cycle, or even a perfect candidate, cannot make up for generations of mis-educated Americans. The division of America by race and gender and the preaching of envy and coveting as if those are virtues will continue to plague America’s public life as long as those ideologies dominate in our classrooms. The candidates (and their staff members) of the major parties will be less acceptable to the average conservative because they will have been educated by socialist and race-obsessed faculties and administrators. Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as warning, “The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.” Really, the process is even faster now, as Presidents tap college faculty members and administrators for key positions in our judicial and executive branches of government. Barack Obama was only briefly away from his campus experience when he became President. So, Young America’s Foundation will remain focused on our mission. It isn’t to win an election. It is to raise succeeding generations who know and love freedom. That contest will be lost if conservatives fail to give young Americans an opportunity to learn our ideas. Sincerely,
Ron Robinson President
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10/2/12 1:50 PM