The Triumph of an Ideological Infrastructure

I have written in the past about just how brilliant conservatives have been in investing in ideological/conviction infrastructure (conservative instutions like the Heritage Foundation) rather than just partisan infrastructure (places like the Republican National Committee). They have createad an army of ideological foot soldiers that are not only conservative, but natural Republicans - killing two birds with one stone.

In reading the New York Times piece about the Heritage Foundation's sophisticated system of incubating young fascists, you can really see how successful they've been. Look at this excerpt:

"Katherine Rogers, a junior at Georgetown, is spending the summer in the Keith and Lois Mitchell room, on the Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Smyth floor, just upstairs from the Norma Zindahl Intern Lounge, which is adjacent to the William J. Lehrfeld Intern Center. Ms. Rogers's father is a longtime Heritage donor, and she is working in donor relations, which she thinks will be useful in her intended career as a pharmaceutical lobbyist."

If you are a right-winger and can get a college student to ASPIRE to be something as disgusting as a drug industry lobbyist, you have done something right. Oh sure, you are helping destroy our country by spreading a destructive "greed is good" mentality - but that's exactly the point for conservatives.

If progressives could replicate this even slightly, and get boatloads of young people to aspire to be, say, union organizers, we'd be on our way to taking this country back.