How to Avoid Indoctrination at the Hands of 'Your Liberal Professor'
LatestLast week, while reporting a longer story, I had the distinct pleasure of joining hundreds of libertarian-leaning fundamentalists at the Great Homeschool Convention outside LA. In the interest of blending into the crowd, I wore the only floral thing in my closet and proudly carried the “GOD & COUNTRY” flag tote delivered to all of us upon entry. But there was still something—my non-whiteness, my laptop, my lack of young children trailing behind like obedient ducklings—that caused quite a few conference attendees to look me up and down with suspicion and then turn the other way. (Prudent.)
Adrift in a sea of nuclear families, I spent a couple hours walking around aimlessly in the exhibition hall, which contained a maze of variously doctrinaire homeschool materials, with a smattering of tertiary political accessories: workbooks on the Constitution, free bumper stickers for Ben Carson 2016. No one talked to me until I paused to examine the materials at the booth for Turning Point USA, a conservative activist nonprofit dedicated to making small government seem aggressively cool and urgent to young people.
Turning Point USA, often written about as a scrappy conservative counterpart to MoveOn.Org, was founded by “wunderkind” Charlie Kirk, a 21-year-old from Illinois who’s been the recipient of fairly glowing press from the National Journal and Bloomberg Politics. (From the former profile: “GOP donors, strategists, and even presidential candidates are awed by [Kirk’s] composure, his intellect, his passion for politics that most don’t associate with the millennial generation.”) Turning Point has, according to its website, identified 45,000 activists for the cause and made its presence known on more than 800 college campuses in all 50 states.
Their recruitment strategy is targeted, informal, pop culture-inflected, aggressive and chipper; at the homeschool convention, it was up in full force. “How old are you?” chirped a pretty, nervous-seeming brunette wearing a Turning Point t-shirt. When I told her I was out of the organization’s target age range (high school and college), she hid the slight slump in her shoulders with a big wide smile. She detailed the many opportunities still available to me if I wanted to get involved with Turning Point USA. “Are you interested in writing?” she asked. I could write some op-eds, she suggested. “Or even, if you want a job!”
I thanked her for the opportunity and picked up some of the snappy-looking pamphlets. “CAPITALISM CURES,” one of them said. “THE HEALTHCARE GAMES,” said another, with a Photoshopped Hunger Games franchise logo on its front. I fastened a button with Turning Point’s main tagline—BIG GOVERNMENT SUCKS—on my neckline and went to go sit down and read.
The materials were badly written and ahistorical—if selectively so, in the Founding Fathers dick-sucking way often exhibited by the far right—as well as consistently anti-intellectual and unintentionally hilarious. “Biased,” the adjective, was repeatedly spelled as “bias.” A recruiting tip suggests that campus activists start conversations with random passersby with the opening line: “Do you think big government sucks?” A pamphlet about how big government is harmful states that “True diversity is not found in skin tone or sexual preference. True diversity is found inside each and every citizen’s mind.”
Another brochure came with an amazing cartoon about liberalism:
But the best brochure of all was this one called “Indoctrination Prevention,” featuring a ‘90s-looking teen model with zombie eyes on the cover and the tagline “10 Ways College Professors Indoctrinate America’s Youth and How to Prevent It.” Its introduction states that it was written “so that college students can take charge of their education and remain steadfast in their beliefs of free markets, capitalism and the American dream.” The entire thing is structured to combat a powerful straw-made golem of the “Liberal Professor,” who is there to stifle you intellectually and break down everything you hold dear.
Let’s take a look inside, starting with:
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