The Right Goes Viral

By Frank Reynolds

CampusReform.org has many of the features you would expect from a university review site: you can rate your teacher, comment on textbooks, and let other students know about exciting upcoming events. But unlike sites such as College Prowler or Students Review, on CollegeReform, you can also report leftist abuses on campus, organize a Tea Party and "raise awareness about America's slide to communism." That's because CampusReform, launched last month by Morton Blackwell's conservative Leadership Institute, is a social networking site with an agenda: to provide training to future leaders of the political right by harnessing the ground-level organizing capabilities of social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter and Myspace.

According to the site's mission statement, "CampusReform.org is designed to provide conservative activists with the resources, networking capabilities, and skills they need to revolutionize the struggle against leftist bias and abuse on college campuses." To this end, CampusReform has sub-sites for 2,376 four-year colleges in the US, all easily accessible from the site's main page. From the sub-sites, students can connect with conservative groups in their area, rank faculty on a scale from conservative to leftist, and rate textbooks for their degree of liberal bias (reviewers should be on the lookout for "Politically Correct Language," "Radical Feminism" and "Reverse Discrimination"). Students can also network with alumni to find jobs and internships with conservative organizations.

Blackwell, the site's mastermind, told the American Spectator that he started CampusReform because institutions of higher education "have become left-wing indoctrination centers" and that "many, many students can go their entire college educations and never see any representations of conservative principles on their campuses." Judging from the list of Activism Ideas on the site, making conservative principles a part of campus life involves organizing Anti-Anti-War rallies, Anti-Vagina Monologues events, Anti-UN days and Global Warming Beach Parties, where students can draw attention to climate change "inaccuracies." The site even provides tips on how to organize an Islamo-Fascism awareness week, an event conceived and promoted by David Horowitz's notorious Freedom Center.

The danger of CampusReform is that Blackwell's Leadership Institute is not as fringe as it may seem: the Institute has actually been fairly successful when it comes to cultivating future conservative leaders. Blackwell himself got his start organizing the youth vote for Reagan's 1980 campaign, and has spent the last thirty years training young conservative leaders since founding the Leadership Institute in 1979. According to the Institute's site, "At least 555 current state legislators" are graduates of their seminars and workshops. Notable alumni include Republican strategist Karl Rove, Sen. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Grover Norquist, head of the anti-health care reform lobbying group American's For Tax Reform.

What's more, by the Institute's own accounts, CampusReform is the largest program the organization has ever created. The site is impressive in its ambition: to serve as a central hub for conservative students to connect with each other and from which they will be able to launch coordinated actions. Plus, it has the funds to back up that ambition: the Leadership Institute spent $4.6 million last year toward seminars and workshops for students from around the country, and this year, before CampusReform even launched, the Institute received 2,000 contributions toward the project, with an average donation of $692. To foster interest in the site, from now until the end of the month, CampusReform is awarding $100 a day to the students who submit the best "liberal abuse" stories. Beyond the site itself, CampusReform also employs 11 regional organizers to help spread the conservative gospel.

Such an organized and well-funded operation should make progressive students ask "Where's our CampusReform?" Why doesn't the young left have a site where we can inform ourselves on issues that effect students as a whole, stay connected to alumni and organize across campuses? To protect the basic interests of progressive students in a time of rising tuition and widespread reductions in secondary education funding, we need it more than ever.

Comments (17)

1. 'Such an organized and well-funded operation should make progressive students ask "Where's our CampusReform?" Why doesn't the young left have a site where we can inform ourselves on issues that effect students as a whole, stay connected to alumni and organize across campuses?'

   Well, the PIRGs are still around. Check out "www.studentpirgs.org."

   Conservative student activists have always HATED the PIRGs, and for good reason. The PIRGs do good work. If you're a student, you can join a PIRG. If you're not a student, you can help to fund one.

   Unfortunately, in the stunted US-American imagination, a few sensational anecdotes, especially presented in the form of advertisement-length films, can make the most diligent research seem to disappear. I don't know what to do about that, though I suspect that requiring full disclosure of the number of people who endorse ANY ad would be a step in the right direction.

   Posted by JakobFabian at 10/21/2009 @ 10:52am

2. Such an organized and well-funded operation should make progressive students ask "Where's our CampusReform?" Why doesn't the young left have a site where we can inform ourselves on issues that effect students as a whole, stay connected to alumni and organize across campuses?

   ************

   Why? Because every time it's been tried in the past it has only been used to facilitate anonymous gay sex and drug deals.

   Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 10/21/2009 @ 11:31am

3. Blackwell may as well organize a groups for rich white college students to band together against the rest of the students they view as trash to order around in the future.

   Blackwell,Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and Joe Wilson are all fine examples of what you don't want your son or daughter to turn out to be. All of them are greedy, lying sniveling weasels who talk a brave talk but are lying cowards. They are corporate whores as are those who follow their lead. They'd sell their own mothers for a profit...cheaply I might add.

   Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2009 @ 11:31am

4. Why? Because every time it's been tried in the past it has only been used to facilitate anonymous gay sex and drug deals.

   Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 10/21/2009 @ 11:31am

   Speaking from experience, Darin?

   Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/21/2009 @ 12:05pm

5. Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/21/2009 @ 12:05pm

   Good one. ;-)

   Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 10/21/2009 @ 12:15pm

6. Why doesn't the young left have a site where we can inform ourselves on issues that effect students as a whole, stay connected to alumni and organize across campuses?

   ************

   Why? Because every time it's been tried in the past it has only been used to facilitate anonymous gay sex and drug deals.

   Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 10/21/2009 @ 11:31am

   If you're trying to make a joke, I don't get it. If you're serious, what the hell are you talking about?

   Posted by cka2nd at 10/21/2009 @ 1:24pm

7. The wrongheaded "right" is going viral on many fronts. The WASHINGTON POST reported recently (in the "On Faith" feature) that conservatives are currently revising the Bible to remove passages they consider too liberal. Jesus Christ himself is too liberal for the right-wing crazies. Good luck finding the Gospels in the conservatives' revision of the Bible. It takes real arrogance, conceit, and hubris to presume to revise what many people consider to be the word of God. But the right wing never has a shortage of those character flaws. If only they would read and live the Sermon on the Mount, what a better world this would be, and they would be a whole lot happier too.

   Posted by beth128 at 10/21/2009 @ 2:54pm

8. Why? Because every time it's been tried in the past it has only been used to facilitate anonymous gay sex and drug deals.

   Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 10/21/2009 @ 11:31am

   As much as Durwood rants on about gays and drug use, I'm starting to wonder if he's a closet gay using prescribed drugs under a false name. I mean, he's really stuck on the gay issue isn't he, and being someone who isn't gay, I find it a little more than a coincidence that he keeps bringing gay issues up?! Durwood, come out of the closet, and join the side that will allow you to be yourself. Really, the beauty of being a democrat is that you actually have the freedom to be yourself. You don't have to fit into the nice square wasp box the GOP has made up for you.

   Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2009 @ 3:25pm

9. f only they would read and live the Sermon on the Mount, what a better world this would be, and they would be a whole lot happier too.

   Posted by beth128 at 10/21/2009 @ 2:54pm

   Beth, if only they would read the bible itself period. Most of them have not one clue what Jesus stood for. I'm a recovering Catholic and pretty much a non-believer these days, but I still think that Jesus, if he really existed, would have been a cool dude. Not the gun toting jackass people like Liverlips paint him out to be. But, alas, I have decided to separate myself from the fruit baskets calling themselves Christians and stop practicing the faith. If there is a God, and if the bible is even partially true, then were pretty much damned anyway due to all of the wars, killing, allowing children to starve to death, not clothing or feeding the poor, putting money before your brothers etc....

   Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2009 @ 3:30pm

10. "Blackwell himself got his start organizing the youth vote for Reagan's 1980 campaign, and has spent the last thirty years training young conservative leaders since founding the Leadership Institute in 1979. According to the Institute's site, "At least 555 current state legislators" are graduates... Notable alumni include Republican strategist Karl Rove, Sen. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Grover Norquist, head of the anti-health care reform lobbying group American's For Tax Reform. "

    Blackwell may have received his start working for President Reagan's campaign but one must ask, "how has he supported himself and family(?) for 30-years on an organizer's salary?

    After reading Jeff Sharlet's fine expose, "The Family-The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," I see a possible link between Mr. Blackwell, his organizations and campaigns and "The Family." Blackwell's style reflects the pattern of The Family's program: a.) an exclusive concentration on elite leadership; b.) high-powered anti-communism; c.) extreme right-wing advocacy, and not mentioned in the article, over wrought religious fundamentalism.

    An indepth profile of Blackwell and his ties is in order. There is more than meets the light of day in this man's activities.

    Posted by LawrenceGulotta at 10/21/2009 @ 3:53pm

11. My theory is a very simple one.

    Evrything in this world revolves around money and what gets you money?...Power.and what gets you Power? Organizing under a common ideology and perceived enemy. Groups like this are organizing not for any conservative principles but to build power for control and then for control of resources. The ones at the top use others like pawns to implement their agenda. Where's the nobility in modern times? It is dead my friends.

    Posted by scott-s at 10/21/2009 @ 6:26pm

12. To scott-s et al -- don't foreclose, :-))

    My status is presently: very much under the influence of Adam Curtis' The Living Dead, esp. 2/3 and 3/3.

    This is information I assume all students should, and would wnat to, have access to, through their elected student governments -- invitating academic departments and personalities to comment ("The cognitive scientists believe they must intervene in politics, because they had objective, scientific knowledge of how people are and what is good for them, whereas politicians do not."- 2/3 above.)

    It could conceivably fall under the category of "leftist abuse" if facts and perspectives dug up by CampusReform agents were simply ignored, with all learned hands (provosts, deans, dept. chairman and alleged specialists in the relevant fields) remaining silent, bemusted and scoffing. It would have nothing to do with academics being "lefties", "liberals", "secular humanists", or anything else -- just with them being assholes. Call it the academic asshole factor, I dealt with it for 35 years, most of the time unaware what it was. It is a good thing the bringers of the gospel might do -- let 'em earn that "viral" smear.

    But here is another, from the other side as it were, and it cuts to the bone. Where did this come from: "...making conservative principles a part of campus life involves organizing Anti-Anti-War rallies, Anti-Vagina Monologues events...."? This puts the above point (and its implication, that the left wing is seized by the 'religion is a virus' psychosis, which is how Germans came to feel about Jews, justifying hatred-reversal) on the side of Vietnam war ralliers. But "Anti-anti-Vietnam war" rallyiers are not worthy to exist. This no doubt explains the hip juxtaposition: pro-wars <=> misogynistas. pweh

    Posted by jones at 10/21/2009 @ 7:46pm

13. The 'right' has been viral (in the sense of Ebolla) for quite some time.

    -- Sy

    Posted by syfriendly at 10/21/2009 @ 9:50pm

14. The ones at the top use others like pawns to implement their agenda. Where's the nobility in modern times? It is dead my friends.

    Posted by scott-s at 10/21/2009 @ 6:26pm

    Agreed.

    Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/22/2009 @ 07:49am

15. Anytime Conservatives try and get a foothold or establish some balance in a leftist bastion, the left gets all bent such as Frank Reynolds does here.

    We supposedly have a free society with free speech but college campuses are not places where Conservatives have dared to have much of a prescence.

    Restrictive PC speech codes at those places have meant you could get into trouble for speaking your mind if somone on the left deems you have uttered "hate speech".

    But those places (Universities and colleges) are to have remained all lib all the time apparently, because let Conservatives start to try to promote their beliefs and organize in such a place, and leftists (excuse me, "Progressives") want to know where their CollegeReform is.

    The left never seems willing to have an even playing field, it always wants the deck totally stacked in their favor, they want a one sided environment, they want no competition to their ideas.....and if it is not that way, then the left screams that things are not "fair".

    Posted by sjchermak at 10/22/2009 @ 09:58am

16. Sounds like longing for the good old days of the 70s and 80s, when campus liberalism and radicalism held sway and the political language of the campus was unchallenged by any dissenting viewpoints opposed to class envy, collectivism, racial greivance politics, group identity politics, and blaming Western Civilization for all the world's ills.

    You know, the campus atmoshpere that created people like Bill Ayers, Bernandine Dohrn, and Barack Obama.

    Liberalism still has a death grip on the faculty of schools, but they no longer have it all their own way among the student body. Just like they long for the days when they didn't have to contend with strong opposition voices in the mainstream media.

    When conservatives behave in the same manner campus radicals have for 40 years, it's called "going viral".

    Hey, we haven't seized campus buildings and closed down schools yet, have we? Set fire to the ROTC building? Stolen an entire printing of a liberal paper and burned it? No, campus conservatives have a lot of catching up to do.

    Posted by Citizen_Carrier at 10/22/2009 @ 10:07am

17. Sounds like longing for the good old days of the 70s and 80s, when campus liberalism and radicalism held sway and the political language of the campus was unchallenged by any dissenting viewpoints opposed to class envy, collectivism, racial greivance politics, group identity politics, and blaming Western Civilization for all the world's ills.

    You know, the campus atmoshpere that created people like Bill Ayers, Bernandine Dohrn, and Barack Obama.

    Liberalism still has a death grip on the faculty of schools, but they no longer have it all their own way among the student body. Just like they long for the days when they didn't have to contend with strong opposition voices in the mainstream media.

    When conservatives behave in the same manner campus radicals have for 40 years, it's called "going viral".

    Hey, we haven't seized campus buildings and closed down schools yet, have we? Set fire to the ROTC building? Stolen an entire printing of a liberal paper and burned it? No, campus conservatives have a lot of catching up to do.

    Posted by Citizen_Carrier at 10/22/2009 @ 10:07am