I’m a 2007 graduate from the prestigious University of Kansas with a dismal degree in Keynesian economics. I was president of the Libertarian Party of KU my sophomore, junior, and senior years. At first, my comrades and I attempted to give the party a mainstream political face (think World’s Smallest Political Quiz), but after about two years of that nonsense we became more or less a group of individuals working together to protest the Establishment and the garbage our particular accredited university was feeding the student body.
We took jabs at the ridiculousness of the democratic corporatist system: the Democrats for being beholden to the neo-cons, the Republicans for embracing big-government, and of course the school’s overpriced lessons in pro-Federal Reserve Marxism. We weren’t out to get votes… we were out to shatter the sheltered, feeble collectivist mindset of those pushing and accepting the Establishment line. We freed some minds, made a few enemies, and caused grown men to tremble at the sight of our anti-State truthaganda.
Our efforts turned quite a few heads… but perhaps not enough. I found myself troubled by the sight of thousands of… young adults?! who cared more about their Muck Fizzou t-shirts than the fact that their freedoms were vanishing by the second. We tried our best to demonstrate to our peers that they were being scammed in more ways than they could currently fathom by the self-promoting, ever-expanding Savior of the People: the State, instrument of the Power Elite. But of course this was easy for the devout statist to refute: I’m just an elitist Libertarian asshole who hates the poor and the regulations designed to protect us from the corporations… Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
I caught quite a few scornful looks and middle fingers flashed my way while protesting on campus. I just smiled back and let my colorful posters do the talking. Speaking out during my anti-capitalist pre-requisites was an action I left behind sometime after my sophomore year. During my first several semesters, just about every discussion class included a heated debate between me and the teach-from-text TA or some self-described “government force brings harmony” socialist. But the New Keynesian chorus and their “deficit spending and inflation are good” tune became deafening. And the Globalist message was everywhere: Market failure is killing the Environment… The US Constitution is antiquated… Prepare to work, live, and lead in a global community… Exploitative, white, patriarchal capitalism needs to be checked by big, benign government… Globalization guided by central banks is intellectually acceptable… Social Security only requires slight reform… And according to the UN, speaking out in class can be likened to hitting one locomotive out of hundreds with a flyswatter.
I took twenty-four hours of pretty easy classes my last semester to get the credits needed to escape the cog factory. I always sat in the back of the auditorium for Intro to Econ. with my laptop either checking email, reading the articles on LewRockwell.com and Mises.org, or mindlessly leveling up my mage in World of Warcraft. I’d casually listen in from time to time when the learned professor spoke of Henry George’s ingenious land-tax idea, the boom and bust cycle inherent in the capitalist system, the great J.M. Keynes: Einstein of economics, etc. These discourses in anti-capitalism usually depressed and angered me quite a bit. Thankfully, genuine intellectuals like Mises and Rothbard were always an e-bookmark away to keep me company. Unfortunately, I have little doubt that most of my peers accepted as truth every fallacy that spewed out of our seemingly wise, good intentioned professor’s mouth.
Note: during one particularly insulting pro-government lecture the entire class of six hundred was treated to an outburst of my maniacal laughter as a new [email protected] letter popped up in my inbox with the subject title: “Anarchy!!!”
So I survived the sickening sequel to high school and am currently taking a year off to live and work in Mordor (Washington, DC) with my girlfriend before heading off to a graduate school that’s drenched in Austrian thought (suggestions, anyone?). While staring down the Eye of Sauron, I plan on ridiculing the State and its minions with my “artwork” and/or doing something much more productive like helping Ron Paul’s campaign go as far as the powers that be will let it go. As much as I despise all things political, I could write a novel on how much I desperately want that integrity-ridden… politician?! to be president.
I have a hunch his presidency would drive the self-described progressive intellectuals at my alma mater up the walls of their ivory prison tower.
July 26, 2007
