Fellow conspirators,
We’ve been outed by Pitzer College’s Alan Jones.
If the caliber of Jones’s "research" in connecting the dots is indicated by this howler--"the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in turn evolved from William Bennett’s Madison Center for Educational Affairs and the Institute for Educational Affairs founded by Irving Kristol"--then we conspirators have little or nothing to worry about. What’s more, the vaunted superiority of American higher education--allegedly under attack by our Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy--would seem to be in some doubt.
For the record, this is the evidence on which Jones relies for his howler. Here’s the readily available truth.
Oh yes, I almost forgot: the evil genius behind all this is the super-secretive Leo Strauss, the hidden imam of the VRWC.
Based upon the conclusions he draws from the "evidence" cited in his article, I presume Professor Jones also acknowledges the fact that Saddam Hussein had strong ties to Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden. After all, there is no question that they both shared the same sources of funds for a significant period: The United Nations.
Alan P. Jones, Ph.D.
Expertise Areas: Development of Control of Appetitive Behavior; Effects of Early Nutritional and Metabolic Factors in Development; Neural and Metabolic Factors in the Ontogeny of Obesity.
This guy’s got as much expertise on the subject as Barbara Streisand, and is entitled to as much credibility.
And the name of the football team of his college is the "Sagehens." NOT MANLY. Chirp chirp. Although I must admit when we played against them some 30 years ago, their fans, both of them, chanted "you got the spirit yes you do; we got the brains, so shut up." Our fans shut up.
OK, so it’s not a VRWC. But who will deny that conservatives of various stripes have been very good at building an intellectual and political infrastructure, and at considerable expense? The contrast with liberal think-tanks is what Ceaser noticed, and it is an important observation.
But who will deny that conservatives of various stripes have been very good at building an intellectual and political infrastructure, and at considerable expense?
No one, I hope. However, the network of conservative foundations, publications, campus groups and think tanks in existence today originally came about in response to the realization that liberals and Leftists were the only ones to have such things back in the 1940s. The story of how conservatives and libertarians decided to make a real fight for American intellectual and cultural life is an interesting one. I touch on it briefly in Right Turn, because John T. Flynn was one of the first to sound the call to arms.
We liberals have been left with policy analysis driven by economics, with "programmatic rights", and with strategies too dependent on litigation. Behind it all, I believe, are an historic neglect of a national community and, yes, an embrace of American exceptionalism.
I meant A FAILURE TO embrace American exceptionalism
I agree with your assesment of the Left, and reiterate the Ceaser tag. It is having the same problem as the post-modern Europeans, but the situation is more problamatic for them because America is still "stuck in History."
That was worded poorly, but oh well, it’s late.
Alan Jones is a fraud. He claims to be defending academic freedom, but in fact it is his goal to keep conservatives out of academia.
Somebody needs to turn the table on Jones and ask why he is so closely affiliated with WorldCantWait, a front group for the Revolutionary Communist party, which openly calls for armed take-over of the government.