Taking the Initiative

Late Saturday afternoon fourteen Nazis climbed aboard an old converted school bus. Dressed in the familiar attire, the little contingent drove slowly through the busy metropolis toward their destination. On their leader’s command they left the bus and, as a small crowd watched, more in pity than in fear, they unfurled the flag with its swastika the color of death and took up their stand outside Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel—in protest of the meeting Young Americans for Freedom was sponsoring inside.

With the American Conservative Union, YAF was holding its second conservative political action conference. It had begun on Thursday evening, February 13, and was to continue through Sunday afternoon. More than five hundred people from across the country attended the four-day meeting, a good crowd considering the cost of registration and accommodations. Last year about 350 showed up. The increase is considerable, though there is always the question: who are the people who come? Are they representative, representatives, or just individual taxpayers? When they vote on resolutions at the end of the conference, what is the significance of their collective decision? Do they count?

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Daniel Oliver

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Late Saturday afternoon fourteen Nazis climbed aboard an old converted school bus. Dressed in the familiar attire, the little contingent drove slowly through the busy metropolis toward their destination. On their leader’s command they left the bus and, as a small crowd watched, more in pity than in fear, they unfurled the flag with its swastika the color of death and took up their stand outside Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel—in protest of the meeting Young Americans for Freedom was sponsoring inside.

With the American Conservative Union, YAF was holding its second conservative political action conference. It had begun on Thursday evening, February 13, and was to continue through Sunday afternoon. More than five hundred people from across the country attended the four-day meeting, a good crowd considering the cost of registration and accommodations. Last year about 350 showed up. The increase is considerable, though there is always the question: who are the people who come? Are they representative, representatives, or just individual taxpayers? When they vote on resolutions at the end of the conference, what is the significance of their collective decision? Do they count?