Senator Rand Paul, master of the faux filibuster, is reaching out to a group that harbors the same hateful rhetoric as the Republican Party. He is joining with the Leadership Institute (LI)
(LI) a conservative organization with a $10 million annual budget that claims to have trained almost 100,000 "future conservative leaders." The institute's graduates include prominent conservatives such as Karl Rove, adviser to former President George W. Bush.
These people think college campuses are too liberal and elite in their thinking, because if there's one thing conservatives hate, it's an independent, insightful,and intelligent person. Self-certified Doctor Paul seems to despise all that fancy learning:
“I refuse to accept that our nation’s colleges will always remain bastions of left-wing extremism. I refuse to allow leftists to brainwash an entire generation of American students into hating our country and our free-market system,” Mr. Paul wrote in an email blasted out Tuesday on behalf of the Arlington-based Leadership Institute.
“Conservatives shouldn’t surrender to the left,” he writes. “You and I shouldn’t leave this next generation of leaders to be brainwashed by America-hating socialists and Marxists.
The LI, according to Right Wing Watch:
has an intern program, an Employment Placement Service and a Broadcast Journalism Placement Service. LI has placed program graduates in positions at: National Rifle Association, Christian Coalition, American Conservative Union, and working for Florida Governor Jeb Bush .
LI alumni include: Ralph Reed, Former Executive Director of the Christian Coalition, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, Congressman David McIntosh (R-Indiana), Congressman Mark Souder (R-Indiana).
I think the inclusion of Ralph Reed in their who's who, is enough for anyone to know that the LI is nothing more than a euphemistic ruse for a fascist, fundamentalist and intolerant "Christian" group. Sounds a bit like the GOP, isn't that vierd?
Meanwhile, here in the real world, college students are protesting real issues, not the right wing psychosis that claims there's 'too much political correctness'. It seems, unlike the protests their parents/grandparents may have engaged in during the 60's, today's protests don't seem to have the same effect. In fact, the consequences for students who feel it is their right to protest, have become more Draconian. The Atlantic writes:
Perhaps school officials are even less sympathetic now than in the past. According to Johnston, as Occupy spread, student activists were faced with increasingly violent punishment. One of the most egregious examples involved the University of California, Davis, in 2011, when a campus police officer, with the backing of his superiors, pepper-sprayed a group of seated students involved in an Occupy protest. Though that’s an extreme example, Johnson added, “we are seeing a less transparent, less responsive, less democratic university than we’ve seen in the past.”
Rand Paul isn't concerned that the costs of a college education are skyrocketing, he's worried that U.S. Universities are rejecting his Ayn Rand-Utopian ideal where it's okay to not have safety regulations for corporations, it's fine for frackers to destroy all the groundwater and it's no big deal if a restaurant refuses to serve black patrons. The fact that schools are becoming less affected by protests and sadly, more conservative, completely escapes Senator Aqua Buddah.
And earlier this semester, the University of California, Santa Cruz—a school founded during the civil-rights movement that still markets itself as a mecca of radical politics—delivered one-and-a-half year suspensions to a group of students who blocked a major highway in protest of tuition hikes. (The students each face sentences of 30 days in jail and restitution, too.) Critics accused the school of capitulating to community members, who were furious over the gridlock caused by the protesters. Undergraduate tuition at UC schools has more than doubled in the last decade to its current level of $12,192—increasing at an even higher rate than has the national average.
Too bad the media, even a rag like the Washington Times, gives legs to Rand's idiotic ravings about Socialism and Marxism in colleges, and thus plants the seed of both sides do it in the heads of way too many Americans. No, Rand, colleges aren't too liberal, they are filled with people who aren't buying the bullshit you're selling and your ego can't stand it.
