Influence
YAF's indirect influence is felt through the number of conservative political figures who began their careers as members in college.
From its beginning as an outgrowth of the efforts to obtain the Republican vice presidential nomination for a conservative in 1960 up through its determined campaign to ensure that a conservative vice president was renominated in 1992, YAF was a major player in the politics of late 20th century America.
Karl Zinsmeister wrote the following about YAF:
| “ | The conservative activists who first organized themselves in the early 1960s were the force behind the rise of Barry Goldwater, the election of Ronald Reagan as Governor of California, the takeover of the Republican Party from the liberal wing that controlled it for decades, the election of Ronald Reagan as president, and the reversion of Congress to Republican control for the first time in 40 years. | ” |
Although YAF members and chapters were engaged in many projects to influence public policy and elect conservative candidates to office, the leadership of the organization was well aware that their goals and objectives were more long-term. YAF was recruiting, training and preparing young people to assume even more important roles later in life. YAF spawned many of the organizational elements of the 21st century conservative movement and provided the leadership and manpower to build those publications, organizations, and foundations into the significant elements of American society that they are today.
Read more about this topic: Young Americans For Freedom
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society.... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)