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Political Climate Change: Ron Paul on the College Campus Circuitby
Gary North Recently by Gary North: Ben Bernanke's Judy Garland Impersonation
First, the video of his recent UCLA rally.
Second, a personal reminiscence. This video was a revelation to me. Half a century ago, I was briefly an undergraduate at UCLA. Twenty-five years earlier, my parents had been undergraduates at UCLA. The political outlook of the vast majority of students at UCLA 50 years ago was standard liberalism. The conservative student movement at that time was close to nonexistent. It was not as small as it had been in 1945, but it was still exceedingly small. There were really only two student organizations in the conservative camp. One of them was the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which back then was called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. The other was Young Americans for Freedom. The first organization has always been primarily academic. The second organization was more geared towards political activism. Both had been co-founded by William F. Buckley, the editor of National Review magazine. I attended a summer seminar in 1962 that was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. It was a two-week seminar. As I recall, there were no more than three dozen students. These students came from all over the west coast. To say that the conservative movement was a fringe movement in 1962 does not really get the idea across of just how tiny it was. There was a libertarian faction in both organizations. The original co-founder of the ISI was Frank Choderov. He was a minimal government advocate. He soon dropped out of the organization, just as he had dropped out of all other organizations. He was a true individualist. The two other co-founders were conservatives, but they were both Roman Catholics. So, from the beginning, a Catholic-influenced conservatism and a Jewish-atheist-libertarian outlook coexisted in the same organization. The same was true of Young Americans for Freedom. Protestants were in the back of the minibus. I do not think it would have been possible to assemble half of the crowd that saw Ron Paul. Even if the organization could have raised enough money to finance 3500 students from across the nation to come to a central location for a political rally, which would have cost fortune, it would not have been possible for the organization to bring that many students in. The idea that there would be that many students who would show up at UCLA at a political rally to hear Ron Paul would have been inconceivable as recently as 2008. The difference between 1962 and 2008 was enormous. But that difference is dwarfed by what has taken place in the last four years. People who got into the conservative movement after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 did not really understand what it was like to be in the movement 15 years earlier. The difference was enormous. Reagan's presidency was a turning point, not because of any success on his part to shrink the federal government, but because of his rhetoric. Rhetoric is very important. It sets the agenda. Yet Reagan was elected four years after Ron Paul was first elected to Congress. Reagan did make an attempt to get the Republican nomination in 1976, but it failed. President Ford was able to get the nomination. But with his defeat to Jimmy Carter, the door was opened to Reagan. Reagan's electoral victory was overwhelming in 1980. The political landscape had changed. It has never changed back. When I joined Paul's staff in June of 1976, I had no idea that anything like what has been happening this year would have been possible. He was sometimes the only Congressman to vote against some multimillion-dollar boondoggle. There was no one in Congress who shared his perspective. There still isn't. Yet he draws huge crowds of students. They are not there because they think Congress will change in 2013. They are there to participate in the formation of a grass-roots movement. They sense the change. The difference between the landscape in 1980 and today, with respect to Reagan's rhetoric rather than his actions, now offers the possibility of serious political change. It is going to take time. Students under the age of 25 are the bedrock support of Ron Paul's campaign. They do not supply the money, but they supply the cheering. They supply the bodies. There are a lot of bodies. April 20, 2012 Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible. Copyright © 2012 Gary North
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