Sunday, August 21, 2005

SOROS ON CAMPUS

News media reports from meetings organized by billionaire George Soros say he and some rich allies are now funding groups intended to counter the efforts on college campuses of the Leadership Institute and other conservative educational organizations. Although Soros and his allies hope through their spending to increase the effectiveness of the left on campus, I do not fear that activities they bankroll will significantly increase the left's campus influence. Nor can Soros stop the growth of campus conservative activities.

My Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program, for example, grew its number of active, independent, conservative campus groups from 216 in September 2004 to 437 groups in May 2005. And Institute graduates have created 32 new conservative student publications already in 2005. The Institute will send 27 field staff out to visit all 50 states this fall, and I expect them to increase the number of active conservative student groups by at least 300.

George Soros and his wealthy friends cannot write checks big enough to increase significantly the resources the left already spends on American college campuses. Not all college professors and administrators are leftists, but the great majority of the politically active ones are, as Dan Flynn's "Deep Blue Campuses" proved. Take all the money which pays the salaries of leftist professors and administrators. Add the money spent on the leftist, official student newspapers. Add the college funds and the compulsory student fee money spent to bring off-campus leftists to speak during the school year and at graduation ceremonies. Then add in all the compulsory student activity fees money poured into leftist student organizations. And the support national left-wing organizations pour into support of the vast array of campus leftist groups. The total has to be many billions every year.

George Soros, billionaire though he is, can't write checks of that magnitude. Neither can his wealthy allies. They can spend a lot, especially if compared to what LI and other conservative foundations spend on campus. But their spending won't have much more effect than pouring a bucket of water into Lake Michigan.

If you study how Soros affected the political situation in other countries, you will see that in every case he supported political insurgents against repressive regimes. In all those cases, he found it easy to identify and fund dissidents morally indignant against the abuses of those in power.

American college campuses certainly are now a fertile field for the kinds of activities which proved successful for Soros in the past. But now he's on the wrong side, and conservatives are on the right side. On U.S. campuses, those with the power are almost everywhere abusive leftists. Those who chafe under the bias and persecution on campus have a big moral edge, particularly when trained and organized conservative students shine spotlights on the abuses. Students appreciate cleverness, but they react negatively to unfairness when it is skillfully called to their attention. Conservatives have moral indignation on our side regarding the leftist abuses on campus. Moral indignation is highly contagious, so powerful that it tends to sweep aside everything else. That is why, in almost every case, a three-pronged strategy of public relations, political heat, and legal responses wins against leftist abuses on campus.

George Soros achieved spectacular results when he funded highly motivated political insurgents against all the massive resources of repressive, socialist regimes. American campuses today are dominated by repressive, socialist regimes. Leftists believe that any conservative presence on campus is too much, even though the resources of time, talent, and money available for campus conservative activity are still minuscule compared to those of the left.

Yet conservatives are making great progress. Once again it's David vs. Goliath. Conservatives have achieved a lot on campus, but barely begun to fight. We shall achieve a lot more as our resources continue to grow. Soros funded David against the Soviet empire. That worked. Now he's funding Goliath on campus. That won't work.

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Leftist ideologues in Australian schools

Imagine the outcry if a conservative think tank, such as the H.R. Nicholls Society, set up an internet site for schools and offered students a $200 prize for the best essay extolling the virtues of the free market. Imagine the outrage if a teachers' organisation then promoted the website and the essay competition to schools, lauding it as something that teachers should incorporate in their lessons.

The response would be one of concern about special-interest groups pushing their agenda on unsuspecting students. Recall the outrage of the Carr Labor Government in NSW in 2003 when federal Employment Advocate Jonathan Hamberger wrote to school principals asking them to inform students about Australian Workplace Agreements. According to then state education minister Andrew Refshauge, the attempt to inform students about employment contracts was "completely inappropriate". The federal Office of the Employment Advocate was told to butt out. One wonders whether the Iemma Government and NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt will respond in the same way to the ACTU [Australia's version of the AFL-CIO] and Australian Education Union's attempts to enter schools?

The AEU sent an email to teachers across Australia headed "ACTU National Competition for Students -- Win $200". Some weeks ago, the winners of the competition were announced and their essays are posted on the ACTU website, www.worksite. actu.asn.au. The email described the competition as follows: "To enter, students must tell us in 300 words or less what makes a job fair and fun for them and why, as well as their ideas to amke [sic] jobs fairer and more fun." The AEU extolled the virtues of the ACTU website, saying: "Worksite for Schools continues to be a valuable resource for younger people about the world of work. Worksite is a terrifice [sic] source of information about the workforce, providing statistics, encouraging debate, creativity and analysis."

Welcome to the double standards of political correctness. It is outrageous for the OEA to inform schools about the increasing reality of the Australian workforce: individual contracts. But it's perfectly fine for the ACTU and the AEU to publicise their one-sided (and increasingly outdated) view of industrial relations. Take a look at the ACTU-sponsored website. Under the section Personality Profiles, students are introduced to trade union and ALP worthies such as Bob Hawke, Sharan Burrow and Greg Combet. That the list is biased towards trade union and Labor stalwarts is to be expected. Yet there is no attempt to balance the list by including other notable figures, such as leading economic dries Bert Kelly, Hugh Morgan and Peter Costello, who represent an alternative view.

Similarly, on examining Fact Sheets, students are again presented with a jaundiced view. On reading about the Ansett collapse in 2001, the impression is that the union movement guaranteed worker entitlements; there are no details about the federal Government's Special Employees Entitlement Scheme. Given the Howard Government's planned changes to the industrial relations system, it is obvious the subject is highly contentious and politically sensitive.

It should be no surprise, given that the ACTU is funding the website, that students are told that the present system works well and that the federal Government has no reason to change the system whatsoever. The website quotes ACTU secretary Combet: "There is no need to change this system. It works well and strikes a balance between reasonable increases for workers and economic factors." Never mind any counterarguments.

In the aftermath of last October's federal election, Wayne Sawyer, an editor of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English journal English in Australia, lamented that, because the Howard Government was re-elected, English teachers had clearly failed to teach critical literacy. According to Sawyer, the teacher's role, instead of being disinterested, is to teach students about the failures of a Coalition government in an effort to ensure that students, as future voters, do not vote conservative. Alas, this most recent example of PC bias involving the ACTU and the AEU proves that the ideological stance taken by Sawyer is not isolated. Such incidents also demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Left: while the OEA is attacked for approaching schools, the ACTU and the AEU are given free rein.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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