All Together Again?

It was a chance to start over again, a chance to forget a year and a half of fratricide, a chance to show sponsors and members that a divided national leadership had been pulled together. The hope was that these chances wouldn’t be blown.

The occasion was the 12th national Young Americans for Freedom convention, held August 3 through 6 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, a futuristic hotel looking like a combination of sets from Star Wars and The Towering Inferno, nearly appropriate symbolism. The four-day-long session featured an abundance of panels, politicos, and platitudes, and everything from a demonstration at City Hall to a rabble-roused chant of “Neutron bomb! Neutron bomb!” at the Thursday night banquet. Yet the convention was less a showcase for its theme, “Working to Make America Great Again,” than it was an examination of the leadership and the future of YAF.

JN

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Jeffery Nelligan

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William F. Buckley Jr.

It was a chance to start over again, a chance to forget a year and a half of fratricide, a chance to show sponsors and members that a divided national leadership had been pulled together. The hope was that these chances wouldn’t be blown.

The occasion was the 12th national Young Americans for Freedom convention, held August 3 through 6 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, a futuristic hotel looking like a combination of sets from Star Wars and The Towering Inferno, nearly appropriate symbolism. The four-day-long session featured an abundance of panels, politicos, and platitudes, and everything from a demonstration at City Hall to a rabble-roused chant of “Neutron bomb! Neutron bomb!” at the Thursday night banquet. Yet the convention was less a showcase for its theme, “Working to Make America Great Again,” than it was an examination of the leadership and the future of YAF.