And some blogger.

This is at the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, which is run by the excellent Young America's Foundation. It's partly a museum, and it houses some archival materials from the Ranch itself. It also contains a small theater in which footage of Reagan's speeches can be viewed.

The small-but-growing library encompasses all the ideas commonly labeled conservative ("from Ayn Rand to Dinesh D'Souza," as our gracious guide, Bryant Conger of the local staff, put it). And YAF will be installing a bookstore soon. The library is not for archival purposes, of course—there's something-or-other in Simi Valley that handles that task—but rather a working library that will ensure the students who attend workshops, events, and classes at the Center will be able to access ideas that their high schools and universities may have, um, forgotten to let them in on.

The main feature in the entrance is a piece of the Berlin wall (from the colorful, graffitti'd Western side, of course), framed by the Pink Floyd Ronald Reagan quote, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

The most important room in the Center is the classroom. YAF takes a lot of its educational work "on the road" to campuses throughout the country, but it now has a facility in Santa Barbara that makes larger-scale conservative functions affordable to those who live in the Western states on a shoestring (such as mendicant bloggers and, much more importantly, college students).

The entire installation is run, by the way, with private funds only, with no corners cut—or even rounded off a little. (Really: don't get me started on what a class act YAF is—from hosting bloggers at the Leadership Conference to the quality of the banquet food at its events. I've attended a lot of entertainment industry functions, and the catering at the YAF banquets was a step above what I've had at any of those dinners in Manhattan or Beverly Hills. [Blogging ethics standard disclaimer: I ate the food. But only enough to verify that it was up to my foodie standards.])

Naturally, there was no general agreement from Conference attendees about such things as the relationship between Church and State, or on what Reagan's legacy might be beyond the liberation of millions of people from totalitarianism. That's all to the good: Classical Liberalism (that is, conservatism) is about the free exchange of ideas. Open dialogue.

So why does YAF use Reagan's legacy—the preservation of the Ranch and the installation of the nearby Center—as a jumping-off point for promoting conservative ideals? Because, like Abraham Lincoln, Reagan got lots of things wrong, and got the most important thing very, very right. In fact, the thing they both got right was the very same thing.

Slavery is wrong, whether it is perpetrated by private individuals, or by the State.

Thanks once more to Jason Mattera of YAF's national team for putting together some of the media outreach at this rather extraordinary event.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:05 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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