The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

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It's "doozie" not "doosie" :)

Good article. These young chickenhawks are a cowardly bunch indeed. Their new talking point to get around the "if you are for the war why don't you enlist" question is to counter the questioner by saying, "you can be in favor of something you're not involved in, right?"

Pretty pathetic. I love to see a chickenhawk squirm, though, so I'll watch the video.

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I think we should stop using the term "conservative" to refer to people such as this group. These right-wingers try to cloak themselves in the respectability that the word "conservative" gives them, but there's nothing conservative about them. The term should be reserved for those with a true respect for established law, traditions, and the inherited norms of American society, not those who wish to reengineer society to move backward, nor those who favor ruinous tax cuts, reckless military adventurism (Bush, war in Iraq, etc.), censorship, or authoritarian party politics. People who favor these things are right-wingers, ranging from reactionaries and authoritarians to actual fascists. John Dean's new book is instructive in this regard. (Though the title is ironic, not only because it uses the term "conservative.")

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An good story. Matera's following in the giant hypocritical
footsteps of "I had better things to do" (than fight
in the Vietnam War) Cheney and don't even fulfill your
cushy Air National Guard service Bush.

Here's the text of a letter I just sent to YAF.

"I understand from a news story that YAF spokesman Jason Matera declined to offer press credentials for the YAF student conference to Julie Brinn Siegel, a student at
UPenn and a reporter for Campus Progess.

What gives here? How can you get your message out if you try to restrict reporting on YAF activities by anyone not already in agreement with your agenda? It's not very
savvy and speaks to very little self-confidence. And Matera's decision certainly violates the spirit of a free press, which our Founding Fathers thought was essential to our republic.

Further, I saw Matera on Chris Matthews. His reason for not enlisting in the militaryto actively support military and political policies he supports rhetorically is cowardly.
What happened to putting your money where your mouth is?

I'm old enough that I was a student at Harvard when Howard Phillips started YAF.
In 1964 I joined the Peace Corps and served two years as an English teacher in Turkey. That was putting my own money where my mouth was. Since then I have worked in public health at modest salaries because I think the work is important and has been my own way of trying to make the world a better place.

Most of the young men I knew did not serve in the military because they were adamantly against the Vietnam War. I didn't know anybody who supported the war while doing
everything he could do to avoid the draft, though we know now there were many who engaged in this kind of hypocrisy. It's never a pretty sight.

Jason Matera is still young. He and other YAFers still have a chance to do the right thing and enlist to support our military actions. That chance was something my generation
worked hard to bring about. We did not foresee that abolishing the draft would not take the burden off the poorest and least educated of fighting in wars they had no
political role in starting and that the well educated would still find many excuses not to do military service. It is shameful, frankly.

Principles are important. And not just on the podium, but in the decisions we make every day. None of us should advocate policies that we are not willing to support
withour tax dollars, our personal efforts, and, if need be, our lives."

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I covered this guy a while back supporting a "white's only" scholarship with the college republicans, even though he was on a puerto-rican scholarship:

MatteraLink

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... their new title... Won't-Serve-atives!

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Sounds like typicall young conservative idiocy.

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Dude, isn't there something else more worth 'covering'. In fact I don't even think you can use the word 'covering' for this. Who the hell cares about some college student?

What kinds of a hard hitting report could possibly have been posted on AlterNet from this gathering?

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A childhood friend of mine was a member of the Roger Williams University College Republicans while Mattera reigned there, so I got to see this guy up close. He loved to generate controversy to get attention for himself (See the White's only scholarship).

Here is a great story. He claims to fight campus bias, but when the Roger Williams College Republicans needed a faculty sponsor, a Liberal professor at the University stepped up to the plate. So here they were railing about Campus bias while owing their existence to a Liberal professor at the school. Anyways, Mattera made sure the group generated as much controversy as possible, because it got him attention.

Sad to hear this guy has moved on after school to be in a position to be taken seriously as a political voice.

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I have to say that I truly appreciate that someone has shed light on the racism in the Latino community. Matteras is a white Latino, yet exhibits racist values. This brings to the light the fact that many white Hispanics (such as Mattera) feel a real hatred for non-white Latinos. They see them as “bringing the race down.

I hail from New York City. I am sure that all of you understand how difficult the housing situation is in New York. It is a highly segregated city. BLACKS are totally excluded from free participation in the housing market. Segregation restricts them to highly unfavorable areas. In fact, I have heard that New York City is the most segregated city in the country.

I grew up as a black Hispanic in New York City. My father was a white Hispanic, my mother was black. As a child, white Hispanics owned or controlled a lot of the housing. They would NOT rent to a Black or mixed family. This continues to this day. In order to secure housing for us (me and my siblings), my light-skinned father had to dissimulate; he went to search for the apartment alone, without his family. When my father showed up on move-in day with his black children, the landlords were incensed. They knew that they had been tricked but they could not do anything against us, because of the housing laws which officially forbid housing discrimination. What did they do? They harassed us, they put voodoo on us (no kidding, you may laugh but a lot of people believe in this), But they could not legitimately evict us.

Jim Crow Laws are supposed to be dead but segregated communities still exist all over NYC. Much of it is perpetrated not by White Americans but by White Latinos.

White Latinos are usually far more racist that non-Latino whites. Please believe me, I have lived it and I still do suffer for this. It was hell growing up among them. They constantly tried to tell me that I was ugly. Why? Because I have dark skin. Latino racism is far worse than non-Latino white racism. Ex: The very word black is considered an insult by Latinos. The euphemistic term is “morena” which literally means brunette. Without a valorization of the word black (black is beautiful) there is not even the possibility of feeling proud of being a Black Latino/a. Racial exclusion is constant and brutal. Latinos assume that, you too, think that your black skin is ugly & undesirable and you want to lighten it, or improve your situation by marrying a white-skinned person. You are refused admission to your own birth community. Every time I identify myself as a Latina/Afro-Latina, I am told” You don’t look like a Latino”. Yet my grandparents were born in Mexico and my father was born in Honduras and our family speaks Spanish. However, none of that can count, unless your skin is light.

So thank you Julie and Mattera. Now maybe now non-Latinos will appreciate what is going on behind the scene in the Latino world. Latinos have been busy pretending that they are minorities and that they need help. They routinely accept scholarships as though they are disadvantaged. Yet, in my experience many the white Latinos whom I have encountered were living quite well in America and were actually benefiting from being white AND of Latin descent. How can they be minorities if their skin is white, they are totally integrated into American society just as are Italians, Irish, Germans etc. Additionally, they often possess enormous resources such as real estates and fine jobs. I never hear of Irish people asking for minority scholarships, or of German people saying that they are at a disadvantage in America. The same should be said of white Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans etc. People need to know that within the Latino communities there is a lot of exclusion, preferential treatment, injustice and horrific racist discrimination going on. Yet black Latinos are afraid to speak out.

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