Fox and Friends Weekend pushes the right wing agenda with some good old fashioned fearmongering over liberal ideas at our universities. The 'Trouble With Schools' segment is recurring on their morning program, and the trouble consists of measures that are improvements to fairness, equity and opportunity. Today's issue was debating whether to remove the crime or felon box on college applications.
Clayton Morris hosted the segment, with the liberal side represented by radio host Richard Fowler, a senior fellow at the progressive organization known as the New Leaders Council. The NLC includes Honorary Co-Chair U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va).
The conservative today is Sterling Beard of Campusreform.org. The group is a far right construct, created by Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute. Their more well-known alumni are Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Mitch McConnell. Campusreform.org describes themselves as:
America's leading site for college news.As a watchdog to the nation's higher education system, Campus Reform exposes bias and abuse on the nation's college campuses.
Fowler is arguing for the removal of the felon box on applications. Higher education results in a reduction of criminal recidivism. Besides, Fowler explains that adolescent behavior should not be a life sentence of a permanent stigma that prevents people from turning their lives around.
Beard is arguing that a felon could make life dangerous for students, especially in 'gender neutral' housing. He harps on people who may have sexual assault felonies, as right wingers are always thinking about sex and sex crimes. The liberal guest used examples of shoplifting to make his point.
If you look further into Campusreform.org, of course they'd put forth a guy like Sterling Beard to appeal to the deep-seeded fear within the Republican Party. The group routinely attempts to lower the quality of education to gain more ignorant conservatives who will regurgitate their right wing talking points. In this case, the idea of compassion towards marginalized members of society is discouraged, which is the same thinking that is eschewed by the GOP.
The Leadership Institute's Blackwell explains the reason they are spawning so many conservative student groups in America's universities and colleges.
"CampusReform.org will dramatically increase the number of battles fought against leftist abuses on college campuses this year. And based on my long experience, I confidently predict conservative students will win most of those new battles as they identify, expose, and combat leftist abuses and bias."
How do they make sure their agenda is advanced? Through CR.org's easy-to-use narcing system. They blacklist professors and other students who are liberal. Period. The group is also notoriously anti-science, anti-education funding and religious.
CampusReform.org was founded in 2009 and is growing substantially. They are responsible for bringing their anti-progress ideas to the mainstream. Last year we learned of an extra credit assignment issued by a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater professor. The students were to attend a protest against Scott Walker's draconian budget cuts. You would think that students would be eager to protest the cuts to the quality of their own educations, but CR.org somehow organized students to advocate for the governor's detrimental budget and demonized the liberal professor.
That's right, the goal is to teach future Republicans how to vote against their own self interests and the indoctrination begins as soon as possible, targeting college freshman.
Thirty-five years ago, Blackwell dispatched a particularly promising 17-year-old pupil named Karl Rove to run a youth campaign in Illinois; Jeff Gannon, a far less impressive student, attended the Leadership Institute’s Broadcast Journalism School.
Beard's group has been one of the conservative college groups that have successfully turned liberal institutions into bastions of regressive right wing 'thinking.' If nothing else, they are a formidable opponent to progress and parity at America's colleges.
LI's Campus Leadership Program, which encompasses CampusReform.org, has already organized over 1,100 currently active independent student groups and publications at colleges across the country and maintains a correspondent relationship with these campus activists.
The Leadership Institute has succeeded, in part, because it’s had little to no competition from the left. College campuses may still be havens for liberal thought, but the right-wing students are the ones organized enough to win major battles.
The issue here is not really the removal of the felon box on applications, but the fact that a person who is given a second chance at success is likely to lean towards the liberal end of the spectrum. Groups funded by the Leadership Institute are against any progressive student who thinks for themselves, just like their voters.
