Chapter Twelve: Everyone Wants Someone to be a Hitler Youth

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The term 'Hitler Youth' has become a popular accusation against any group of young people deemed to be radical, and used by both the left and the right.

Glenn Beck called the victims of Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, Hitler Youth because they were at a camp sponsored by Norway's Labour Party. "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing." (1).

And yet Beck himself helps to run youth indoctrination camps, though he prefers to call them "schools".

The Louisville, Kentucky Courier Journal ran a story about the Vacation Liberty School in Danville, Ky., the latest of an expanding roster of "volunteer-run programs for children mostly aged 10-15 that resemble a mix between vacation Bible school, U.S. history and tea party-style conservative ideas that supporters say aren’t taught in public schools." The schools, the story added, are run by Glenn Beck’s Tea Party-friendly 9/12 Project. (2)

And to show that they have not changed their attitudes since the Conservative Movement began, at another in Tampa, Florida: "Children win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the 'banker' will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value." (3) Of course you could also conclude that the gold standard will rot your teeth.

Faytene Grasseschi (Krystow) shocked people recently when she claimed that she wanted her youth movement to be like the Hitler Youth, only this time for good not evil. It might surprise her to know that those German youth also fought against what they saw as moral deprivation, including abortion.

At the time, any woman wanting to terminate a pregnancy, could obtain a pill from a chemical plant (probably Bayer) for 50 marks, so abortions were on the increase. (4)

Even Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had such a huge impact on Jason Kenney, and is now Pope Benedict XVI, was a former member of the Hitler Youth. (5)

The image to the left is from a front page of the Nazi publication, Der Stuermer.

The headline reads, "Declaration of the Higher Clergy/So spoke Jesus Christ: You hypocrites who do not see the beam in your own eyes. (See Matthew 7:3-5)"

The cartoon depicts a group of Hitler Youth marching forth to drive the forces of evil from the land. The caption under the cartoon reads, "We youth step happily forward facing the sun... With our faith we drive the devil from the land."

Indoctrination of children, is indoctrination of children.

If it Was Good Enough for Baden-Powell

In November of 1922, a Mr. K. Friedrich visited Harvard University to speak to their Liberal Club about post-war Germany.  He gave an animated account of a new phenomenon: the "Youth Movement" or "Gugenelbewegung."

"'The Youth Movement' expresses the new spirit in Germany. It feels that the old life was cold, hard and unprofitable, stifling all the better instincts of the young people of the nation. The old militaristic system could not be called culture.

"It was merely a mechanical perfection, wholly lacking in spontaneity. The 'Youth Movement' is embracing a different theory of values in the educational standard. The tendency is constantly towards a more liberal ideal. Its studies are more and more in the realm of Philosophy, Literature and Religion. The old shackles are being cast off by a new and spontaneous enthusiasm." (6)

When we think of a German Youth Movement, we automatically think of the Hitler Youth, and the disturbing images of indoctrinated children proudly giving the infamous salute.  However, the youth movement actually began before the War, as a vehicle for young people to commune with nature and escape the oppressive regime of Wilhelm II. Their hikes were intellectual and cultural endeavours, as they shared poetry; discussed and debated philosophy, current events and politics. And while many groups had uniforms, more common would be musical instruments and books.

During the war, the movement gained momentum, when shortages in essentials, resulted in many schools being closed; so for children and young adults, these hikes provided their education.  After the war, the groups began to organize and many became more political in nature; some even sponsored by political parties.

The German Zionist Youth Movement

Leo Strauss, the German emigre who inspired the neoconservative movement,  would become an active participant in the Zionist Youth Blau-Weiss, then led by Walter Moses.  And while the group enjoyed the typical hikes in the mountains, they were also very militaristic. Strauss would refer to it as pagan-fascism, and indeed Moses liked to imitate Mussolini, who had come to power in 1922.

It was here that Strauss claimed to have nurtured his authoritarianism, and the concept of a "clique", led by a dictatorial style leader. As early as 1923 he spoke of a preference for a quasi-totalitarianism, and detested “bourgeois” or “liberals” seeking to preserve their lives and comfort.

He would actually try to join the Nazi Party but was turned away because he was Jewish.  Said Strauss of Hitler, his “political theology” was hostile toward “me and my kind”. (7)

You Don't Have to be German to be a Hitler Youth

When civil rights activist, Tom Hayden, (formerly married to Jane Fonda) was a student at the University of Michigan, he became the editor of the Michigan Daily, and one of the founders of  Students for a Democratic Society.  SDS was in direct contrast to Young Americans for Freedom, and the two groups often clashed.

In one article of Hayden's in the Daily, he compared YAF to the Hitler Youth.  They were certainly cult-like, in their attempts to dress and act like William Buckley Jr., and accepted no opposition to any of their arguments, which they like Buckley, were always well prepared for.

YAF responded to Hayden's article in their own newsletter.  "Next to the Twist and barely knee-length skirts, the most fashionable thing of the season is the rousing , vitriolic attack on the so-called 'Extreme-Right'".

Buckley approved of the counter-attack, but privately he worried that  Hayden was right.  The John Birch Society, that was providing funding and moral support to the conservative youth group, had suggested in one of their reports, that if Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 nomination,  they would assemble forces in his [Goldwater's] fascist army. (8)

Leo Strauss would develop a philosophical argument which he called Reductio ad Hitlerum.  What he suggested was that not everything Adolf Hitler did was bad, and using examples like Hitler was anti-smoking, loved dogs and was a vegetarian, we can't automatically think of those things as bad, just because they were associated with Hitler.

Of course Hitler was not a vegetarian, but loved wild game, sausages and caviar, (9) and in 1926, apparently in order to impress Mimi Reiter, a 16-year-old girl, he whipped his dog so savagely that it terrified her. (10)

This does speak to another aspect of neoconservatism. The power to deceive, in order to create a public persona that the masses can get behind.

Strauss is right however, to suggest that not everything Hitler did was bad and in fact the political strategies that the neoconservatives adopted, were like time delayed synchronized swimming.  They followed his path to power, almost to the letter.  I'll be getting into that in more detail, later.

However, Hayden was not off the mark.

Two Burning Images

Undampered by a chilly drizzle, some 40,000 Germans jammed the square between Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Opera House looking at a black mass of criss-crossed logs, insulated from the pavement by sand. A thumping band blared out old military marches. Toward midnight a procession entered the square, headed by officers of the University's student dueling corps in their dress uniforms: blue tunics, white breeches, plush tam o'shanters and spurred patent leather jack boots.

Behind them came other students and a line of motor trucks piled high with books. More students clung to the trucks, waving flaring torches that they hurled through the air at the log pile. Blue flames of gasoline shot up, the pyre blazed. One squad of students formed a chain from the pyre to the trucks. Then came the books, passed from hand to hand while a leather-lunged student roared out the names of the authors:

"Erich Maria Remarque [wild cheering]—for degrading the German language and the highest patriotic ideal!" (Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front, against WWI)

"Emil Ludwig—burned for literary rascality and high treason against Germany."

"Sigmund Freud—for falsifying our history and degrading its great figures. . . ."

On he went, calling out the names of practically every modern German author with whom the outside world is familiar: Karl Marx, Jakob Wassermann, Albert Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger. Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Walther Rathenau.

... While the flames flared highest, up to a little flag-draped rostrum stumped clubfooted, wild-eyed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in the Nazi Cabinet, organizer of the great midnight bibliocaust. "Jewish intellectualism is dead!" cried he. "National Socialism has hewn the way. The German folk soul can again express itself!

"These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old etra, they also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. . . . The old goes up in flames, the new shall be fashioned from the flame in our hearts. ... As you had the right to destroy the books, you had the duty to support the government. The fire signals to the entire world that the November revolutionaries [German Revolution that overthrew the Kaiser] have sunk to earth and a new spirit has arisen!" All over Germany similar pyres blazed with similar books. (11)

The Nazi youth were driven by anti-communism and anti-liberalism.  The anti-Semitism came about because of the popular belief that the Jews were working with the Communists to take control of Germany.

The conservative youth in the early days, were also fuelled by anti-communism and and anti-liberalism, but while they didn't resort to book burning, an  Indiana chapter of YAF, did make a very public display of burning baskets, alleged to have been manufactured behind the Iron Curtain.

However, there is more than one way to burn a book, or even a basket.  An affiliate of YAF, the Intercollegiate Society Institute, formerly the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, a paleonconservative think tank created by William Buckley Jr., publishes a list of the 50 worst and the 50 best books.

When describing the 50 worst, they use similar language to that of the young Nazis feeding the flames.

Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male -  "A pervert's attempt to demonstrate that perversion is "statistically" normal."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958) - "Made Americans dissatisfied with the ineradicable fact of poverty. Led to foolish public policies that produced the hell that was the 1960s."

Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) - "[The Church] should therefore strengthen the existing communistic institutions and aid the evolution of society from the present temporary stage of individualism to a higher form of communism." Eek!

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971) - "The hollow soul of liberalism elaborated with a technical apparatus that would have made a medieval Schoolman blush." (12)

And the list goes on.  Can't you just picture them being thrown into the fire?

Even those they don't metaphorically burn, they still use to take jabs at liberal tradition. From their Best list:

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947) - "... reveals the true intent of liberalism"

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) - " ... her account of the peculiarly modern phenomenon of "totalitarianism" forced many liberals to consider the sins of communism in the same category as those of fascism, and that is no small achievement."

Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) - Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography." (13)

Sources:

1. Glenn Beck On Norway Killings: Children Like 'Hitler Youth', Huffington Post, July 27, 2011

2. Glenn Beck Group Bills Youth Propaganda Camps as Schools, by Arthur Goldwag, August 9, 2011

3. Glenn Beck hits 'new low'; compares Norway victims to Hitler Youth, The Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2011

4. Germany After the First World War, By: Richard Bessel, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993, ISBN: 0-19-821938-5, p. 248

5. Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth

6. MR. FRIEDRICH TELLS OF "YOUTH MOVEMENT" IN GERMANY, the Harvard Crimson, November 22, 1922, London Times, April 18, 2005

7. Enmity and Tyranny, By: Alan Gilbert, March 5, 2010

8. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 154

9.  Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover, By: Ryn Barry, Pythagorean Books, 2004

10. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, By: Robert G.L. Waite, Basic Books, 1977, ISBN-10: 0306805146

11. Bibliocaust, Time Magazine, May 22, 1933

12. The Fifty WORST Books of the Century, Intercollegiate Society Institute

13. The Fifty BEST Books of the Century, Intercollegiate Society Institute

Youth For Western Civilization

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The group, Youth for Western Civilization, is a spin-off of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists; both spin-offs of Young Americans for Freedom, and all connected to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  In fact, YFC is financed by the Institute through their Campus Leadership Program. The financing must be substantial, since when they made their debut at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they were actually one of the major donors of that year’s event.

YWC was created to perform stunts that the seemingly more respectable Republican youth groups might shy away from.  Or as they say at the institute:  "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans ..."  (1)

For instance, they  held a muffin sale at several campuses, where the price of the muffin was determined by your race.  Whites paid $2.00, Asians: $1.50, Latinos: $1.00, Black/ African American: $0.75, Native American: $0.25 and Illegal Immigrants FREE.  Obviously this an attempt to incite, as whites are penalized just for being white and illegal immigrants get a free ride, while everyone else is subsidized. 

However, many of the actions of WYC are more dangerous, as they go after what they call "liberal" professors.  One who had been targeted by the group, was being harassed to the point where he emailed a friend stating that he had a gun and knew how to use it.  YFC hacked into his email account, took the message to the public and the professor was fired.  He shouldn't have said what he did and the university was right to let him go, but these are the kinds of activities that the group engages in.

Retired university professor Michael Yates says he's glad to no longer be in academia.  "At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs."  Others are not so lucky.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

When the South Park cartoon depicted the prophet Muhammad as a bear, or at least as someone dressed up in a bear costume, the show's producers began to receive death threats.  This prompted Seattle artist Molly Norris, to establish an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, in protest of censorship.

The Muslim religion does not allow depictions of the prophet, anymore than Christians would tolerate Jesus drawn in a disparaging fashion, or Jews, Abraham.  It's blasphemy.

To Youth for Western Civilization, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up a bit trouble, so they promoted the artistic endeavour on several U.S. campuses.  It was petty and mean, but that's what defines them.

The Marcus Epstein Affair

Thomas Tancredo is a former Republican congressman and now the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization.  In his younger days, he was a member of Young Americans for Freedom, and was rewarded with a job in the Reagan administration.  Tancredo ran for President in 2008, under the new Constitution Party banner, on an anti-immigration platform.  An outspoken critic of immigration and multiculturalism, he has earned a reputation as a bigot. 

Marcus Epstein is the executive director of Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, an immigration panel at CPAC, financed by YWC, discussing the imminent demise of the white race.  “No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization. (2)  Stephen Harper, in a 2003 speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, claimed that "multiculturalism" was "a weak nation strategy", and to ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, he called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

Epstein also runs Pat and Bay Buchanan's The American Cause, another group established to end non-white immigration.  Says Buchanan:  "The central objection to the present flood of illegals is they are not English-speaking white people from Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean." (4)

Founder of the National Citizens Coalition, where Harper has been a member for more than three decades and once acted as its President, Colin Brown, when asked why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified, but letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens, but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

All those involved in the conservative movement, on both sides of the border, sing from the same hymnal.

Back to Epstein. 

Not exactly white himself, but Korean-American, he writes for Human Events, The American Conservative, The Washington Examiner, the anti-Semitic Taki's Mag, and racist/anti-immigrant site VDARE.  He also claims that he is not a racist, and yet according to the Washington Independant:

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.” ... He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine. He’s under a restraining order to stay away from the couple involved, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund. (5)

A Circle of Hate

According to the Anti-Defamation league, YWC has many ties with White Supremacists. 

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) may have standing in the mainstream conservative world but from its inception, white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced the group.  In April 2011, YWC received direct help from white supremacist Jared Taylor,who runs the racist magazine American Renaissance. Taylor and YWC joined forces that month to create a fund-raising packet that Taylor mailed to his supporters on YWC's behalf. Taylor is a strong supporter of YWC because of his own racist convictions. He introduced race as a crucial issue in his fund-raising letter for YWC by writing, "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society—language, religion, class, ideology—it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the western world faces in the 21^st century." (6)

ADL is also concerned with YWC's founder, Kevin DeAnna, who Taylor says  "knows how important our cultural identity is" and "has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren."

DeAnna is also linked to Richard Spencer, who runs a site called Alternative Right.  Spencer writes articles for Taylor's American Renaissance and The Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic and racist publication, and is the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank. Spencer once remarked, "I'm very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side." (6)

The H.L. Mencken Club for Mice

H. L. Menken (1880-1956) was an American author best known for his satirical essays on the famous Scopes Trials (evolution), which he referred to as the "monkey trials".  Though not really a racist, he was an elitists, who scorned a democratic system that allowed lesser men to rule their superiors.  He was also critical of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The H. L. Mencken Club came into existence in 2008, and according to their website is "an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right."  The Club hosts an annual conference that attracts speakers and guests from around the world, including paleoconservative Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan of The American Cause, YWC's Kevin DeAnna and his friend Richard Spencer.

If these people represent intellectuals and academics of the Right, then the Right is in serious trouble.

Peter Brimelow has a Canadian connection through the Reform Party, now called the Conservative Party of Canada.  He is an author and former right-wing journalist for Conrad Black's Financial Post and William Buckley's National Review.  In his book The Patriot Game, he attacks Quebec, bilingualism, the Canadian flag and the Canadian national anthem, which he sees as pandering to Quebec.

According to a college friend, after Stephen Harper read the Patriot Game, he became so enthused that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (7)  I've read the book and in many ways, it formed the basis for much of Harper's and the Reform Party's philosophy.

Brimelow was an acquaintance of Canada's Paul Fromm, who founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World countries.  Fromm was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at a Reform Party assembly, in exchanging for getting Peter Brimelow to speak.

Brimelow, along with other speakers at the H.L. Menken conference, Paul E. Gottfried and Steve Sailer, operate V-Dare, an anti-immigration, pro-white hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Centre covered the inaugural event in 2008, where much of the talk was about "how the GOP could regain power by more fervently courting the white vote."

[Said Brimelow]  “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.”  Look at Alabama ... with whites only comprising 65 percent of the electorate, they’re in worse shape than American whites generally. Yet McCain easily won that state, in large part because of support from 88 percent of white voters  ...  It seems like an implicit thing that everybody in the South understands how things are and they all vote Republican."

Brimelow even suggested that McCain should have said that Obama was the affirmative action candidate. “It would have been so easy. All he had to do is get up and say it.”

Fortunately, I think McCain had a bit more class.

Most of these groups who use terms like "Western", really mean "White".  When you trace their funding, they all dip from the same pool, promote each others think tanks, and organizations, and deliver the same message.

This was the message that the Reform Party presented and it did not disappear when they bought out the rights to the Tories.  It's still there under the surface.  The media just no longer covers it.

Sources:

1. My Right-Wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

2. CPAC Immigration Panel: Readying the Fight to Save the GOP and White America, By Brian Tashman, Right-Wing Watch, February 11, 2011

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, p. 19-24

4. Into the Mainstream, By Chip Berlet, Southern Poverty Law Centre

5. Tancredo, Buchanan Bruised by Racist ‘Karate Chop’, By David Weigel, The Washington Independant, June 2, 2009

6. Youth for Western Civilization:  Ties with White Supremacists, Anti-Defamation League, May 23, 2011 

7. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3

Paleoconservatives and the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

(The above photo shows Ronald Reagan at an ISI Alumni Meeting in 1977, building support for his presidential run.  The group played an important role in Barry Goldwater's 1964 victory at the Republican National Convention, but were unable to propel him to the White House.  They had better luck with Reagan)

In the 1960s, college and university campuses, known for their apathy, began to erupt into political activism.  Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to move to the back of the bus, inspired many to stand up, or perhaps more appropriately, "sit-in", for racial equality.  Her actions had sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., who led the boycott, wrote a book: Stride Toward Freedom. 

Motivated by King's words, on February 1st, 1960; four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical School, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil, sat down at a "whites-only" Woolworth's lunch counter and ordered coffee.  Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve them.

The next day, 27 young people appeared at that lunch counter to protest the store's actions, and engaged in a "sit-in".  The third day there were 60, and the fourth, more than 300.  Their actions ignited a wave of student sit-ins and protests across the South, and despite beatings, arrests and the sting of fire hoses, the protests continued to grow.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned on the need for a strengthened Civil Rights Act.  This caused a great deal of alarm to movement conservatives, so they began to launch a counter-attack, hoping to halt the growing Civil Rights Movement.

So while hordes of youth led JFK to the White House, a different horde rallied around the Republicans, with a contrary message.  By 1961, Time magazine was reporting on the new "involvementism"  trend, saying that the most startling part of it was a sharp turn to the political right. (1)

Nonetheless, Kennedy presented his Civil Rights bill in 1963, passed soon after this death, which made discrimination in public places illegal and required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. 

Intercollegiate Society of Individualists

The America First Committee, established to protest interventionism and limit the powers of the president, had started a small publication called Human Events, and in the summer, sponsored a journalism school for young right-wing thinkers, in an attempt to tap into the fervour of youth.

Two young men who attended the school in 1957, David Franke and Douglas Caddy, would become key figures in the conservative movement.  Taking what they learned at Human Events, they looked for the necessary wave of discontent to launch a campaign, and found it in the space race.

The Soviets were winning in 1957, prompting the U.S. government to create the National Defense Education Act, designed to enrich math, science and engineering at colleges and universities, where they could draw from a talent pool, for their own space exploration.

However, at the time, anyone working on government projects of a sensitive nature, were forced to take a loyalty oath, swearing that they did not belong to, nor would they join, "any organization that believes in or teaches the overthrow of the United States government ..."  So soon after McCarthyism, the oath did not sit well with many people and in 1960, Senator Robert Kennedy, drafted a bill to drop it.

This was just what Franke and Caddy were looking for.  McCarthy supporters and William Buckley Jr. clones, they sprang into action.  Working through the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, formed by Buckley and company in 1953, they rallied the masses against the abolishment of the oath.

With petitions from 30 college campuses, including Harvard, (though the first two signatories at the Ivy league school were Atilla the Hun and Adolf Hitler (2)), Congress had to take them seriously.  But not seriously enough, given that 153 schools supported dropping the oath, and they prevailed.

Caddy and Franke would go on to create Young Americans for Freedom, with Caddy acting as their first president, and both would be active in Youth for Goldwater. 

In 1962, Young American for Freedom, bestowed its “Freedom Award” on arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond. This is because in the conservative/libertarian orthodoxy prevailing in the 1960s, freedom meant white people’s freedom from federal efforts to interfere with racial discrimination, not black people’s freedom from racism. When Kennedy's landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress, the vast majority of congressional Republicans supported it, but Barry Goldwater did not, and he, with strong backing from YAF and other conservative movement organizations,  captured the ’64 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Paleoconservatives

The Intercollegiate Society of Individualists is still in operation, though they've since changed their name to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc.  They are part of the Paleoconservative or "traditional" conservative thinker movement,  attempting to uphold their European, Judeo-Christian heritage.  The organization also fights what it perceives as political correctness and liberal bias, that they believe is destroying their "freedom".

In a 1989 speech to the Heritage Foundation, the ISI President, T. Kenenth Cribb Jr. stated:

We must...provide resources and guidance to an elite which can take up anew the task of enculturation. Through its journals, lectures, seminars, books and fellowships, this is what ISI has done successfully for 36 years. The coming of age of such elites has provided the current leadership of the conservative revival. But we should add a major new component to our strategy: the conservative movement is now mature enough to sustain a counteroffensive on that last Leftist redoubt, the college campus...We are now strong enough to establish a contemporary presence for conservatism on campus, and contest the Left on its own turf. We plan to do this by greatly expanding the ISI field effort, its network of campus-based programming. (3)

Morton Blackwell of the Leadership Institute, on which Preston Manning's centre for destroying democracy was based, shares those views (Blackwell was also a member of ISI in his youth and the youngest delegate at the Republican convention that won the leadership for Goldwater).  He called universities the last bastion  of the Left.

But what exactly is a Paleoconservative?  The prefix suggests something ancient like the study of dinosaurs.  They only claim to have a "sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture—an identity that is both collective and personal." 

However, given the religious element in the group, this is probably Biblical, relating to the "curse of Ham", son of Noah.   Noah, upset over an indiscretion of  Ham, who was supposed to be black, cursed all the descendants of Ham's son Canaan. They were to be slaves for eternity and were to serve the other six-sevenths of the population.  Canaan's descendants were said to have populated Africa, meaning that it was the divine decree of God that gave the black people the liability of being enslaved by white people and justified the degradation of the entire race.
 
Andre Horn, a 13th century Chamberlain of London, said, "Yet 'serfage' in the case of a black man is a subjugation issuing from so high an antiquity that no free stock can be found within human memory." And for the Judeo part of the heritage espoused by Paleoconservatives,  the Babylonian Talmud states that "negroes were the children of Ham, who was cursed with blackness."
 
The Religious Right movement, was created to oppose desegregation, and the Conservative Movement was very much the revenge of the white man, which is why arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond, was given a "freedom" award.
 
In 1996, a member of Stephen Harper's  Reform Party,  Bob Ringma, stated in a newspaper interview that store owners should be free to move gays and "ethnics" "to the back of the shop", or even to fire them, if the presence of that individual offended a customer.
 
Reform was very much an "Anglo" party, which is why they always took such a tough stand against Quebec and immigration. 

"... the notion that some Reform members may have strong Anglo-Saxon nativist inclinations is supported by more than merely the background profiles of its leaders, members and supporters. It is supported also by the words of many of its ideological mentors who depict Canada as not only historically an Anglo-Saxon country but also part of a wider Anglo-Saxon culture that is in need of recognizing and re-establishing its heritage."  (4)

When it was discovered by the media that Neo-Nazis had "infiltrated" the Party, the biggest surprise came from the infiltrators, who were shocked that they were being expelled.  White supremicist Al Overfield,  insisted that he told the Reform Party leadership, and was assured that they had no problem with it.  Overfield stated that Reform Party member Harry Robertson admitted him to the Party and that Stephen Harper was well aware of Overfield’s past involvement in far right groups. (5)

Another group angry over their expulsion was the Heritage Front, led by former KKK boss Wolfgang Droege.

"The expulsion enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach? Privately, spokesmen for B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress admitted that Droege had a good point."  (6)

It would not be a stretch to refer to the present Conservative Party of Canada, as Paleoconservatives.  They too seek to uphold their European, Judeo-Christian heritage.

 Sources:

1. Education: Campus Conservatives, Time Magazine, February 10, 1961

2. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 69-70

3. Kenneth Cribb: Conservatism and the American Academy: Prospects for the 1990 's, Heritage lectures #226, December 7, 1989.

4. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, p. 170

5. Report to the Solicitor General of Canada Security Intelligence Review Committee, December 9, 1994

6. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, ISBN: 978-0002550741, p243-44

Chapter Eleven: "We as Young Conservatives Believe ...."

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

When William F. Buckley Jr. began his education at the very conservative Yale University, he ruffled more than a few feathers. He began by taking on the school's hierarchy, challenging school policy. Not because it was then a place of injustice - no blacks or women allowed, but because he feared a growing liberal presence, that threatened his natural place in society.

This was not the first incident of this kind for the young Buckley. While attending Millbrook School, an exclusive private institute in New York, he appeared uninvited at a faculty meeting to complain about his teachers' politics, which he believed were too liberal.

Maybe he missed the school's motto before enrolling - Non Sibi Sed Cunctis, which is Latin for "Not for Ones Self but for All", a view he would continue to challenge throughout his life.

The Crusade for Christianity and Capitalism, Not Necessarily in That Order

William Buckley's father, William Frank Sr., was a Texas oil tycoon, who had holdings in many other countries, including Canada. His son's anti-communist leanings came directly from him, which were cemented by his experience as an oil baron in Mexico.

In 1913, military leader Victoriano Huerta, overthrew the democratically elected government of Francisco Madero. Buckley kept out of the conflict, since it had not changed how he conducted his business. However, when Pancho Villa took the field against Huerta, and threatened to expropriate foreign oil holdings, Buckley began to pay attention, and despite the fact that his own country's president, Woodrow Wilson, took the side of Villa's rebels, sending in troops to assist them, Buckley remained loyal to Huerta.

When the rebels successfully ousted Huerta, Buckley funded coups against the new government, aided fleeing priests, and lobbied Washington to intervene against the revolutionaries. In 1921, when one of his agents was caught smuggling guns into Mexico to aid anti-government forces, Buckley was kicked out of the country and his properties were confiscated. (1)

This experience indelibly shaped his worldview, seeing the Mexican revolutionaries as part of a worldwide Bolshevik takeover, and himself as a crusader, fighting a worldwide movement that was against capitalism and Christianity. In foreign affairs, he did not support his country's idea of making the world safe for democracy, but felt that authoritarianism was the best way to keep the masses in line.

He was a member of Charles Manion's America First Committee that had agitated against U.S. involvement in European wars, preferring to take sides in smaller conflicts, that would ensure U.S. control of natural resources, thus keeping communism in check.

During the Spanish Civil War, he enthusiastically backed the dictatorship of  Catholic Francisco Franco, and during WWII, wanted the United States to stand aside and allow Hitler to defeat the Soviet Union, which, according to a visitor to the Buckley home, he saw as "an infinitely greater threat than Nazi Germany." (2)

The Creation of a Philosophical Anarchist

The Buckley children were home-schooled, where they were instructed in the fine arts, and indoctrinated into the religion of the free market.

A regular guest in the Buckley home was the philosopher, Albert Jay Nock, who had created the theory of a Remnant Society. The Remnant, according to Nock, consisted of a small minority who understood the nature of the state and society, and "who would become influential only after the current dangerous course had become thoroughly and obviously untenable", a situation which might not occur until far into the future.

This small minority, of course, was the country's elite, and the "current dangerous course", FDR's New Deal and the "state" as a creature of the "mass-man". In his book, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, Nock claimed that only a few members of society were capable of being properly educated, seeing it as a fact of nature, "like the fact that few are six feet tall" and that "there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others"

The very tall Buckley (well over six feet) admitted that Superfluous Man, was his favourite book, I suppose because it validated his sense of superiority. He was one of the Remnants, a "Nockian counter-revolutionary remnant", who must spend his life fighting a "global contest between Christian individualism and atheistic communism". (1)

In his day, Nock (d. 1945), realized that his thinking would not be accepted by society, and referred to himself as a Philosophical Anarchist.

Buckley, while a gifted writer, was never really a deep thinker. His views were written in stone, and his pedantry, allowed him to effectively challenge those with conflicting ideas. Many liberal intellectuals, drew him into debate, only to find themselves reduced to rubble.

In his book, God and Man at Yale, Buckley debunked "academic freedom" as a screen behind which the faculty was indoctrinating gullible students in liberalism and atheism. He even named the offending professors and exposed what he "supposed to be their brainwashing techniques". "As a believer in God, a Republican, and a Yale graduate," wrote McGeorge Bundy, one of the targeted profs, "I find that the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author." (3) However, the arguments failed to prevent it from becoming a best seller. In fact, they may have helped to make it so.

Bright Young People With Stars in Their Eyes

During the 1960 Republican convention, a large group of noisy young people, created quite a sensation. Calling themselves Youth for Goldwater, they attempted to take over the Republican leadership and turn the Party into a strict conservative body. Barry Goldwater was their chosen leader, because of his staunch anti-communist, anti-Civil Rights Movement, pro-military and pro-business, views.

However, Goldwater claimed that he wasn't ready, so instead Richard Nixon was given the nod. Nixon of course, lost to a young senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Though they had been defeated in battle, the war had just begun, as a well known conservative activist, Marvin Liebman, recruited the young soldiers for a new kind of army.

Liebman's firm, Marvin Liebman Associates, Inc., provided organizational, fundraising and public relations expertise to the anti-communist and conservative movements, so he worked his magic, becoming a father figure to the young radicals. A meeting was scheduled for September 9, 1960, at William Buckley's Sharon Connecticut estate - Great Elm.

"Let's go for September 9 at Great Elm, in Sharon, Connecticut. That's the Buckleys'—Bill Buckley's—family home, plenty of room." The word went out, and a month and a half after the convention, as summer lingered in New England, a hundred young people gathered at Great Elm, where, over three days, they would lay the foundation of Young Americans for Freedom. (4)

The location was not without its symbolism. Buckley's father, William Sr. chose an area, where as a Conservative Catholic Texan, he would be surrounded by liberal protestant Easterners. They would have to take notice. He no doubt used the same logic when choosing the progressive Millbrook School in New York, for young Will, who immediately took on the establishment.

So while most young people were pushing for equality, an end to nuclear armament and the military-industrial complex; this group of 100 met to push for the exact opposite.

"They're politically minded, some of them active in state and national organizations upholding loyalty oaths, campaigning for the right to work without joining a union, supporting investigating committees in the tradition of Senator McCarthy. "What's special about them," Marvin [Liebman] continued, "is how they feel the call of a mission where Communism is concerned." (5)And they were of the the right sort. "These kids—grown kids; they're in their late teens and twenties—have names like Adams and Baker." (5)

The meeting resulted in the creation of The Sharon Statement comprised of a series of clauses, introduced by the words, "We, as young conservatives believe..."

They could have just as easily been led by the words, "We, as young conservatives don't accept...", because they were against almost everything. Eisenhower, nuclear disarmament, the censor of Joseph McCarthy, the Welfare State, unions, Civil Rights, liberals .... all on the YAF "hit list".

But they did adopt three basic principles: the acknowledgement of God, states' rights (segregation), and the sovereignty of the free market.

On March 16, 1962; Time magazine covered YAF's first major rally at Madison Square Garden. One reader commented the following week: "I attended the Young Americans for Freedom rally at Madison Square Garden and was duly impressed with the rousing example of patriotism. I was a Republican, but am now a confirmed conservative. Perhaps a new political party is what this country needs." WILLIAM H. WISDOM Cherry Hill, N.J. (6)

But another reader was not as impressed with the attacks on the New deal and the Welfare State, and their trumpeted war cries: "Why it should surprise anyone that the bulk of ultraconservatives are under 30 puzzles me. Why not? They missed the Depression, so can't understand the desperation that led to social-welfare bills. Never having been hungry and without work, they can't understand why they should have to pay to help those who are. They missed World War II and Korea, and seem to think that war is some grand chess game. They've lived so long in the soothing syrup of security of job and home that they can't tolerate the insecurity of the cold war. I'd rather be dead than Red, too, but first I'd like a chance to fight the battle without bombs." SHIRLEY PUDAS Charlotte, N.C (7)

Since then, according to a new book - A Generation Awakes: Young Americans for Freedom and the Creation of the Conservative Movement, by former YAF leader Wayne Thorburn: "hundreds of thousands of young conservatives have passed through YAF on their way to becoming conservative leaders -- among them a Vice President of the United States, 26 members of Congress, eight U.S. Circuit Court Judges, numerous media personalities and journalists, college presidents and professors, authors, and leaders of every kind of conservative and libertarian organization in America."

The vice-president was Dan Quayle.

Other important alumni, include, David Keene, President of the National Rifle Association; Michelle Easton, Founder and President of Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute; which is promoted by Ezra Levant, Geert Wilders and Sun TV; Christopher Long, now President of the paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, begun by Buckley Jr. in 1953; and Richard Viguerie, pioneer of direct mail political fundraising.  They have also helped many Republicans get elected, including Ronald Reagan.

The Republican Party Destroyed

When William F. Buckley Jr. got off his plane in July of 1964, to attend the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, he was greeted by a large contingent of YAF members, detonating confetti bombs and singing "Won't You Come Home Bill Buckley". (8)

Since their formation, four years before, Young Americans for Freedom had grown, and young people dressed like Bill Buckley was a common sight on college and university campuses. He was their hero.

And while they cheered and hooted for Buckley's arrival, a different scene played out for Dwight D. Eisenhower. There Yafers showed their support for Barry Goldwater, holding up signs and chanting "We want Barry", letting the former president know that his support for Goldwater's rival, William Scranton, would not be appreciated.

Throughout the convention, wherever Barry Goldwater went, his noisy young fans went with him, standing in front of both the Confederate flag and the Stars and Stripes. Journalists were shouted down and mowed down, though they did manage to capture a few quotes, including the gem from a Goldwater supporter: "The nigger issue will put him in the White House!" he roared, when asked about the Civil Rights groups protesting outside.

Creating bookends in the Cow Palace, where the convention was held, one side would yell Viva! while the other would promptly answer Ole! Norman Mailer, who was in the crowd, called it a "mystical communion", reminiscent of Seig Heil. (9)

The moderate Republicans, of whom there were many, began to panic. What if Goldwater won on a platform of inequality, union busting and nuclear attacks on perceived enemies? Scranton warned that "Godwaterism has come to stand for a whole crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions that would be soundly repudiated by the American people." He was right, although a colleague presented the biggest Question of the day:

"WHAT IN GOD'S NAME HAS HAPPENED TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?" Little did he know that it was going to get a whole lot worse.

One of the young Goldwaterites, was the seventeen-year-old Morton Blackwell, who continues to train young conservative warriors, at his Leadership Institute. He helped Preston Manning create his version of the school, with a $10 million donation from a single corporate sponsor, who asked to remain anonymous.
The strong influence of the American neoconservatives, now has me asking "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME HAS HAPPENED TO CANADIAN POLITICS?", though I already know the answer.

This is what happened.

Sources:

1. The Remnant: William F. Buckley, Counter-Revolutionary, By John Judis, The New Republic, March 26, 2008

2. ibid

3. Columnists: The Sniper, Time magazine, November 03, 1967

4. Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, By William F. Buckley Jr. , Basic Books, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-465-00836-0, p. 18

5. ibid

6. Letters: Time Magazine, March 23, 1962

7. ibid

8. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, By Rick Perlstein, Nation Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-8090-2858-1, p. 372

9. Perlstein, 2001, p. 382(4)