Selling Radicalism

The CLA's flier is an orgy of American symbolism.

With the basketball season finally coming to an end and the copious amounts of free-time that has afforded me I had the pleasure to indulge myself in one of my favorite of New Trier's extra-curricular offerings, Out-of-the-Box Club. This Thursday's speaker was a representative from a local chapter of the John Birch Society (jbs.org). In a nutshell the JBS is an extra-Conservative, libertarian national organization founded on a near religious devotion to the Constitution and the protection of our constitutional republic against the threat of Communism wherever (if anywhere) it exists. While the representative that plenty of interesting things to say (including some not-so-PC comments about the Civil Rights Movement), what struck me most was the flier he handed out. It was basically an advertisement for the Campus Liberty Alliance (campuslibertyalliance.com), which is the youth branch of the JBS national network. Absent from the flier was the McCarthy-esque fear-mongering and fiery opposition to all things un-American, and in its place was a milder call to action which would seem to appeal to any American. Here's the mission statement printed on the flier:

The mission of Campus Liberty Alliance is to educate our country’s future young leaders on faith, family, free enterprise and a free society, and to activate, equip and send them into the marketplace of ideas to recapture and proclaim the virtues of liberty.

 I found this interesting in light of our class's focus on conscious construction. It seems to me that the JBS is using this flier as bait to draw in new recruits. It appeals to the sense of patriotism that are almost naturally installed in us as Americans without the hinting at the sharper, more radical thinking the society promotes. In fact the flier shows great empathy for its readers. Perhaps its this kind of advertising that has kept the society's membership steady for the past 50 years.

The Ultimate Token?

Towards the end of the TV Tokenism presentation Mr. Bolos raised the intriguing point that in some regards Barack Obama could be viewed as a different kind of token. I think this argument definitely has some validity. When I think about the presidency of Barack Obama I think about a lack of action. Obama offered his ability to compromise as one of his most valuable characteristics during the 2008 campaign and he has shown this to true beyond perhaps even his own knowledge. Obama has seemed unable to satisfy the Democrats or Republicans, the Liberals or Conservatives, and seemingly the entire public, from the poverty stricken to the wealthy elite. Obama compromising role has meant that he hasn't had the kind of dramatic effect on the direction of our country that his campaign of hope and change promised. In this way Obama has been made a token. He is a black man put in an authority position on to have the main story and the main events be lead by his fairer skinned counterparts.