If you haven't read the Powell Manifesto, you can see the whole text here. It's long, but that's what makes it so amazing -- one of our supreme court justices spent an extraordinary amount of time thinking about college students, university faculty, and how to "straighten everyone out." The only problem is, he was mostly wrong.
I won't spend time trying to analyze what was going on in the 1960s and '70s on campuses when Powell wrote his memo, but I will say that I think the problem today is pretty much the converse of what Powell thought was the problem. I think that America's best and brightest future entrepreneurs and businesspeople are becoming increasingly enamored with conservative ideology. Many young people now think that you need to be conservative to be successful in the business world, and those who study business often gravitate to conservative ideology as they go through college.
Progressives cannot afford to cede the domain of business to conservatives. In the "war of ideas," we need to make clear that you can be a good businessperson and have a progressive worldview at the same time. Conservatives like to show off their rags-to-riches stories (especially those from minority backgrounds). Liberals are better known for boycotts, petitions, and protests. There's nothing wrong with boycotts, petitions, and protests, but we need to add a new element to the traditional youth organizing mix – personal and group success stories that provide progressive role models.
This is also very important for long-term funding of progressive causes. Conservatives have always been successful at raising money from big business, and they have also been gradually increasing their support among small business owners. They cleverly work to cut off funding sources for progressive causes. For example, "tort reform" is basically a strategy to keep money out of the hands of lawyers who often give to progressive candidates and progressive causes. So in the long run, getting more entrepreneurs to identify with a progressive worldview is both good for business and good for the future funding stream going toward progressive causes.
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How do you get so many reads with so few posts?
The reason they are falling back into conservativism is simple, liberalism failed, it failed to create equality and lead to a slide of value (value of human worth) Human worth in the way that before people worked for what they needed and wanted, you were rewarded for work, now you can get by on "crutches" The New Conservatives unlike the old view liberalism as destruction of will and choice. In a way it removed the incentive to work. You said that conservatives show off the rags to riches stories, the reason is simple, they have done what many of the liberals couldnt fathom anymore in thier mind, work hard. In many ways Conservatives have become the new party of empowerment whereas the liberals have become the party of complacency in ones situation. Just my two cents.
You make some good points, solidusnot........you've given us all a lot to think about, if we choose to be honest with ourselves
I was wondering if you have any tip on choosing the topic and how do you get a lot of hits?