Imagine if you will a scenario where two people of very liberal political leanings meet, fall in love, get married, and have kids. These two are not only liberal, they are the elite. Degrees from Stanford, high-powered lawyering jobs, and one of the spouses eventually gets a plum assignment in government. They have everything, and can provide everything to their children.
The kids grow up in kind of a bubble away from the cares of the work-a-day world. These kiddos won’t go shopping at WalMart. If they slum, they’ll go to H&M.
Most of those kids grow up to follow in their parents’ footsteps—the right colleges, the right jobs, the right politics. Maybe somebody like Chelsea Clinton. Except, what happens when this doesn’t happen?
Let me introduce you to the leader of the College Republicans at Stanford University. He grew up with an impeccable liberal pedigree. His parents are as liberal as they come. So, who is this maverick in the nest of Democrats?
He’s Susan Rice’s son.
Yes, THAT Susan Rice. She of the lies about Benghazi and Bowe Bergdahl. One of the former Obama Administration officials who went on an unmasking spree in 2016. She is a liberal’s liberal.
How did this rebellion happen?
John David Rice-Cameron, 20, says that often when he was in middle school, his dad would have talk radio on when he picked him up from school or tennis practice.
Young Rice-Cameron says that his dad would be arguing with somebody like Rush Limbaugh, and the youngster soon found himself agreeing with everything Limbaugh said. Probably kind of a teen-aged rebellion thing, but read on.
About the same time, Rice-Cameron began listening to talk radio on his own, and he discovered Mark Levin. And this is where his intellectual grounding in conservative and libertarian thought began.
If Levin mentioned John Locke, R-C would read some John Locke. If Levin talked about the Federalist Papers, R-C would read those, too. [I'm kinda surprised that no one requires reading the Federalist Papers in high school anymore.]
A Rush baby and Levin acolyte is now running the Stanford College Republicans
He has been described as described by one campus publication as “Stanford’s most outspoken political provocateur” — and is taking his passion for liberty and advancing it at Stanford University, his mother’s alma mater.
“If we are going to promote the liberty movement, if the liberty movement is going to succeed, we need to do something about these college campuses,” he told The College Fix in a telephone interview. “We need to ensure the liberty movement is heard.”
R-C calls his approach "combative conservatism", and has been wielding it to great effect so far this school year. “You don’t provoke for the sake of provoking because that is not principled. But you don’t let the fact that someone might get triggered prevent you from saying or doing something important. We must break this leftist monopoly.”
Young Rice-Cameron is not leading the Republicans with what you might consider normal leadership skills. He’s learned how to provoke and annoy from the real professionals—the Left. He’s turning those skills back on the liberal establishment, and causing some serious freak-outs on campus.
From College Fix
In the fall, the group[College Republicans] hosted terrorism expert Robert Spencer for a talk on radical Islam. Prior to the event, leftist students blocked efforts to promote it. The speech itself prompted a large protest and conflicting reports of physical altercations ensued.
Earlier this year, the College Republicans pushed for a Stanford professor to either resign or cut ties with the Campus Antifascist Network he co-founded. Then the group used public pressure to get the administration to agree to allow it to use an American flag on its T-shirts.
Rice-Cameron had a hand in all of it. Three months ago, he became the group’s president. His activism has been inspired in part by the Tea Party movement, calling its platform “true constitutional conservatism.”
And what does his mother, one of President Obama’s chief lieutenants, think of her son’s beliefs and actions?
“She and I disagree on a number of things and we agree a lot,” he said. “She has always set an example of principle, entering public service for the right reasons — because you care, because you want to serve your country.”
“Those are the kinds of leaders I see in people like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, the House Freedom Caucus,” he added. “I’ll even say that about President Obama. … He had some pretty destructive ideas … most of his policies were wrongheaded, but I think he is an honorable man who entered politics for the right reasons despite having ideas and principles I have a hard time swallowing.”
Rice-Cameron had been a Cruz supporter during the primary, and even called The Mark Levin Show to talk to his political hero about it. It was one of two times Rice-Cameron spoke on-air to “The Great One.” Another time they spoke about an op-ed Rice-Cameron wrote for the Stanford Review headlined “Students for Justice in Palestine Linked to Terrorist Affiliate.” Levin shared the column on social media, and it made Rice-Cameron’s day. The radio show host had no idea he was Rice’s son.
More recently, his identity is starting to be discussed publicly. A recent interview on PragerU delved into the issue. Rice-Cameron was also profiled recently by Stanford Politics Magazine, which noted his father, Ian Cameron, also a Stanford alumnus, is a former executive producer for ABC News. Susan Rice told the magazine her political differences with her son are not an issue.
“I love him very much and I’m very proud of him,” she said. “And even though we may differ on substantive issues — many substantive issues, not all — that doesn’t get in the way of my ability to support and encourage him and love him the way you would hope any parent would.”
“Jake, like me, is an African-American and of mixed parentage,” Rice also said. “And he understands, as I do, the importance of the equality of rights for all. That’s an area where we share a strong commitment.”
The article also noted that the fact that Susan Rice is his mother is well known on campus but “not the root of his notoriety.”
“Rather, it’s the particular brand of politics Rice-Cameron has helped bring to Stanford,” the report notes, describing it as “Trumpian.” [COMMENT--He'll probably grow out of this soon enough--he just needs to keep listening to shows like Levin and Pursuit of Happiness Radio]
“So college campuses are basically the last bastion of leftist monopolization,” he said. “You have a campus Left who believe they have the right to dictate who comes on campus, what gets to be said, what gets taught, they control almost all student governments, they have an almost complete monopolization on the campus press.”
“It’s rammed down your throat since start of freshman year,” he said of leftism. “We really are fighting for a marketplace of ideas, we are fighting for our right to have our ideas be heard.”
I love seeing this. I am thrilled to know that talk radio may actually help save the liberty movement. But more importantly, I think this shows that you can have significant political disagreements in families, and not end up hating one another.
And his parents aren't disowning him. They are probably just hoping this is a phase.