Wrichard writes: “I think the real problem is that there isn’t enough of an organizational culture among conservatives to serve as a nucleus to rise to the challenge. We have to close the NGO gap.”
Alexis writes: “wretchard: NGO gap? The traditional word for NGO is church.”
Responsa: Wrichard is correct, as is Alexis.
The problem for conservatives is that its non-profit organization of choice is a church or a faith-based initiative. As the First Amendment increasingly “evolves” to mean (grotesquely) “separation of religion from public and political life,” those church-based non-profits will be increasingly marginalized.
President Bush’s faith-based initiative will not endure; or, rather, since a government-funded entity can be created but not defunded, and no good deed can go unpunished, the funding will be directed to “faith-based initiative, 2.0.” I won’t take the time to describe what the redefinition will involve; but if you imagine what it will take to get funding to a particular church (or mosque) in Chicago, you won’t be far off.
Sen. Obama has declared that he will institute a parallel military. What will this involve? Americorps is an example, whereby recent college grads can pick up a government-funded, low-paying NGO job at the local liberal outfit, get some training, and prepare to do some community organizing to increase aid to NGO’s. This work will be defined as a moral equivalency to military service, elevating the community organizer, devaluing service in the military. At this point, the Long March through the institutions will be complete. Brilliant, really. You’d have to have been at ground level over the past decade to really appreciate the process.
Unfortunately, the anti-intellectualism of much of the Republican party blinded it to obvious strategic responses. Republicans were in effect asking, derisively, “How many divisions does the Ivory Tower have?” How many, indeed.
The academics are cheap to buy, really. Any administration could have bought them (and the NGO’s)off for a pittance via grants and fellowships. But no one did. Republicans scorned them instead. Billions in the Interior omnibus go for cattle and sheep grazing; a truly insulting amount goes to the arts and humanities endowments. For want of proper care and feeding of the intelligentia, conservatives will reap the most vile kind of response that the very smart, and very angry, denizens of the ivory tower, leading their useful idiots, can dream up.
