Young Americans for Freedom Totally Explained

Everything about Young Americans For Freedom totally explained

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is a conservative youth organization that was founded in 1960. While the 1960s were its most successful years in terms of numbers and influence, YAF continued to be active as a national organization until the late 1990s. Today, a number of college students have started independent student groups at universities nationwide bearing YAF's name and logo.

Philosophy

YAF's founding statement of principles, the Sharon Statement, was written on September 11, 1960, by M. Stanton Evans with the assistance of Annette Kirk, wife of the late Russell Kirk.
   Since its founding, YAF continuously identified itself as "conservative." The founders were among those who helped to define the modern meaning of this term in American politics.
   However, the term "conservative" has changed in meaning over several generations. Before World War II, most American conservatives were isolationist. But as the Cold War began to dominate American foreign policy, the old conservatism disintegrated. After Robert Taft was defeated for the Republican nomination in 1952, isolationist conservatism mostly vanished. In the 1950s, a new kind of conservatism arose. This new ideology was formulated in large part by the newspaper Human Events, the magazine National Review, and National Review's editor William F. Buckley, Jr. This new conservatism combined free-market economics, respect for traditional values, orderly society and anti-communism.
   In the late 1960s, the term libertarianism began to be used for a political philosophy. Many of those who popularized this term were initially part of the conservative movement, but came to separate themselves from the conservatives on certain issues. Libertarians within YAF believed, for example, the military draft was a violation of the individual freedom the organization claimed to embrace. The conservatives (or traditionalists as they were sometimes called) supported the draft as being necessary to defeat communism.
   After 1969, the relationship between conservatives and libertarians in YAF was often rocky. A majority of members identified themselves simply as conservative, but some identified as both conservative and libertarian, and still others identified themselves simply as libertarian. From time to time, power struggles broke out; when this happened, the libertarians almost always ended up losing.
   In later years, new viewpoints would be amalgamated by the conservative movement, including neoconservatism in the early 1970s, the New Right in the late 1970s and the Religious Right in the 1980s. Some YAF members identified with some of these philosophies, others opposed them and still others were content to simply identify themselves as conservative without further specificity.
   Since its founding, YAF members on college campuses focused primarily on national and international politics, rather than on-campus politics. Thus members were much more likely to pass out handbills for a candidate for congress than for student body president.

History

YAF's history can be broken into six periods.

National conservative activism, 1960 - 1965

In September 1960, YAF was founded at a meeting held at Buckley's estate in Sharon, Connecticut.
   In the first four years of its existence, YAF grew rapidly on college campuses. On March 7, 1962, a YAF-sponsored conservative rally filled Madison Square Garden in New York City.
   In the 1960s, the Republican Party was divided between its conservative wing, led by Barry Goldwater, and its more liberal wing, led by Nelson Rockefeller. YAF members fell squarely on Goldwater's side. However, some members had sympathy with the conservative Southern Democrats known as Dixiecrats, and thus from its inception YAF was deliberately non-partisan. By 1964, YAF was a major force in the campaign to nominate Goldwater, and then after his nomination, to elect him president. Goldwater's massive defeat in the presidential election of 1964 demoralized many members.
   One of the organization's major achievements during this period was their defeat of Firestone's plans to open a rubber plant in communist Romania. A large YAF public relations campaign, capped with a threat to spread "Boycott Firestone" handbills at the Indianapolis 500, resulted in Firestone canceling their Romanian plans in April 1965.
   YAF faced opposition from groups like the American Nazi Party because of the presence of Jews in the organization and its close relationship with Marvin Liebman. Most members also kept their distance from segregationists such as George Wallace and conspiracy theorists such as the John Birch Society. However, YAF did honor staunch segregationist and Senator from South Carolina Strom Thurmond with its Freedom Award in 1962.

Reaction to radical activism, 1965 - 1971

Liberalism and radicalism dominated campuses from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, primarily as a result of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. During this era, members felt outnumbered by the left on campuses, and spent their energy challenging and rebutting left-wing groups such as Students for a Democratic Society.
   YAF members tended to hold similar opinions to their older compatriots within the conservative movement. Members vocally supported an aggressive policy of seeking victory in the Vietnam War, but opposed how the war was being conducted, such as the use of conscription and allowing the enemy sanctuary in the Laos, Cambodia, and the North Vietnam.
   A smaller fraction philosophically extended the traditional support of limited government in economic issues to social, and defense-related issues. This group came to be known as libertarians. Members of this faction were among the founding members of the Libertarian Party in 1971.
   The majority of members during this era supported Ronald Reagan's successful bid for governor of California in 1966, as well as his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.

Advocacy politics, 1971 - 1985

In the 1970s, YAF became much older, demographically speaking. Rather than merely staging campus demonstrations, they focused on influencing national politics by lobbying and occasionally staging and publicizing small demonstrations. When the Nixon administration enacted wage controls and price controls, abandoned the gold standard and improved relations with mainland China, YAF felt he was abandoning conservative principles. They publicly denounced the administration for these moves, becoming the first conservative organization to do so. They supported Reagan's almost-successful bid to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and his victorious race for the presidency in 1980.
   On college campuses, YAF was a large political group, more conservative and less partisan than the College Republicans. Members were willing to oppose liberal Republicans and support conservative Democrats and third-party candidates. During many local and national races throughout this era, YAF members were divided about whether to support a moderately conservative electable candidate or to support a staunchly conservative long-shot candidate.
   In 1980, Young Conservatives of Texas was formed by a group of YAF members in Texas that broke off to found their own organization. Since that time, YAF itself has never had a major presence in the state.
   By the mid-1980s, many of YAF's leaders were in their thirties and long out of college. Some of them held positions in government while continuing to run the organization as a lobbying and fund-raising group for conservative causes.

Campus activism, 1985 - 1990

As YAF grew older, most of the original members went on to other things, while younger members dominated YAF. During this era, a new generation of liberal and radical activism was growing on college campuses, and members began focusing on opposing these movements. This growth was strongest in California, where members staged protests in favor of aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, in favor of Reagan's anti-communist policies and in opposition to the United Nations.
At the same time, internal problems paralyzed the YAF hierarchy. The national board was still controlled by lawyers and lobbyists who remembered the glory days of YAF fund-raising in the early 1980s. The new activist element resented and distrusted the old guard, and began to gradually whittle away at their power. In 1989, an alliance of Californian and New York activists ousted most of the old guard from national leadership positions.

1990s

By 1991, the national board of YAF contained a majority of Californians -- the first time a single state had had a majority in the governing council. However, this new régime found itself unable to effectively run YAF as a financial and organizational entity.
The strength of its activism was shattered by the Gulf War that begin in January 1991. Most members considered President George H. W. Bush to be insufficiently conservative, and his rhetoric justifying the war -- "a new world order" -- to be dangerously utopian.
Later in the 1990s, YAF returned to national advocacy politics. The national office organized petition drives and staged a variety of events to promote the conservative viewpoint on a variety of public issues. Some of these events would have an attention-grabbing theme such as "Pardon Oliver North" and "Impeach Janet Reno."

Today's YAF

In the spirit of the once prominent organization, a number of college students have created campus organizations bearing the YAF's name and logo . The only actual organization left can be found in California. California YAF is a statewide political action committee that endorses and assists conservative candidates for public office.
On college campuses, the independent YAF chapters have been involved in activities including rallies supporting the armed forces, advocacy for strict control of illegal immigration, demonstrations against affirmative action and protesting liberal campus speakers. YAF has also organized protests against legislation enacting anti-discrimination protection for transsexuals.
Notable YAF chapters exist at Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan.

Michigan State University

The YAF chapter at Michigan State University has been a frequent source of controversy.
   The Southern Poverty Law Center took objection to the MSU chapter's actions and has included the organization on its hate group list for 2006 under the "general hate" category. In an interview with the Lansing State Journal, a spokeswoman said the YAF chapter went overboard for advocating "a lot of anti-gay beliefs" on the MSU campus.
   On November 20, 2006, around one dozen YAF members from MSU and Olivet College were involved in a protest outside the Lansing City Council. They were protesting a proposed ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals and transsexuals. Some of the protesters held signs reading "Straight Power."
   On October 26, 2007, around 50-75 people were involved in protesting a YAF event hosting Nick Griffin, Chairman of the British National Party (BNP). Griffin who has been charged with Antisemitism and Racism, was forced to do a Q&A after being continuously interrupted. . The event was later attacked by conservative activist David Horowitz .
   On April 21, 2008, the YAF's official blog posted a poll asking readers, "Which is Worse? 1. Judeo-Bolshevism / Neoconofascism 2. Islamofascism." The posting went on to add, "Despite representing only 2.5 percent of the population, Judeo-Bolsheviks provided over half of the funding for the Democratic Party [...] Trotsky, Karl Marx, Hegel, and many other founders of Marxism were what can be considered 'Judeo-Bolsheviks.' [...] Not all Jews are 'Judeo-Bolsheviks,' just as not all Republicans are warmongering, corporatist neoconservatives." In response, the SPLC condemned the YAF for anti-Semitic "hate on campus." The posting was removed from YAF's blog less than 48 hours after first appearing.
   The current co-chairmen of MSU-YAF are Eric Thieleman and Matt Ogonowski.

Lasting influence

YAF's indirect influence is felt through the number of conservative political figures who began their careers as members in college.
These alumni include former national chairman and former U.S. Representative Robert Bauman; former California chairman and former California legislator Pat Nolan; U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox; U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo, a 2008 presidential candidate; American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene and a great number of other national and state politicians.

Footnotes

YAF Chapters

Critical

(Michigan State University) YAF Watch

Further Information

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