The Intercollegiate Studies Institute was founded in the early “God and Man at Yale” days of the American conservative movement with the purpose of keeping western civilization alive within American institutions of higher learning. The group has waged an impressive battle, provided funding and encouragement to a stellar group of professors, redefined the “unofficial” campus newspaper at dozens of schools, and given conservative students a path to discover intellectual stimulation abandoned by trendy academia. We’ve never been reluctant to endorse their events or send our friends to their website.

Recently, ISI announced a large scholarship contest for students who might be interested in communitarianism or the work of Robert Nisbet. By registering, students will receive a free copy of Nisbet’s brilliant, but controversial Quest for Community. If they follow-up and write a winning essay, they’ll receive mucho dinero and honors galore, as well.

Right now conservative thought seems to focused on economic concerns, but Nisbet’s work is still relevant and timely. It is *not* easy to be a cultural, sociological, or anthropological conservative in modern times. It takes wisdom rather than conformance to ideology and insight that often requires a kind of politically incorrect honesty that our very language seems to discourage today. However, those students who participate and struggle with Nisbet’s book will gain an interesting perspective through which to evaluate policy and the strength of the bonds between themselves and their neighbors. Here’s ISI’s pitch:

“2010-2011 Scholarship Essay Competition for College Students
‘Totalitarianism, Tweets, and Turf: Human Community in an Age of Techno-Globalism’

Registation Deadline: December 3, 2010

Essays Due: February 18, 2011

Essay Contest:
Originally published in 1952, Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community argues that a central yearning of the human person is for real community. For Nisbet, man is naturally gregarious and the experience of community is a necessary condition for human flourishing. He observed that throughout much of human history, communal institutions were understood as irreducible units of society, entities of culture formation and building blocks of civilization.

Nisbet suggests that the mass society of modern statism emerged, in part, as a profoundly unnatural and distorted substitute for the authentic communities of pluralistic civil society. In short, he presents the contemporary “quest for community” as a response to the loneliness of modernity, affirming Hannah Arendt’s account of modern totalitarianism arising from the atomized society of liberalism. As Ross Douthat observes in his preface to the new edition of the book, “if man can’t find that community on a human scale, then he’ll look for it on an inhuman scale—in the total community of the totalizing state.”

Drawing upon such thinkers as Burke and Tocqueville, The Quest for Community challenges the social atomism of an individualism that provides no essential buffer between Man and the State. Observing that “the present crisis” of modern political thought is the result of “the increasing loss of correspondence between the basic liberal values and the prejudgments and social contexts upon which the historic success of liberalism has been predicated,” Nisbet offers a vision of the free society buttressed by the social conditions necessary to sustain it.

Focus and Format of the Essay:
The Quest for Community was written before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when an Iron Curtain divided Europe and cast its shadow over the globe. Today, the Cold War is a distant memory, and public figures do not blush to speak of a “global community,” one seemingly united by trade and rapid advances in technology. Such political, economic, and social changes invite consideration of the enduring relevance of Nisbet’s work.

In light of developments in international politics, global economics, and the extraordinary technological innovations of recent decades, essayists are asked to reflect upon the social, political, and anthropological premises of The Quest for Community. Is community as Nisbet understands and presents it still necessary? Is it desirable? How do the barriers and challenges to establishing meaningful community compare to those he considers? Do our contemporary circumstances lend support to Nisbet’s insights, undermine them, or suggest that they have been overtaken by events?

Participation in the competition is free and open to all undergraduate students. All registered participants will receive a free copy of Robert Nisbet’s book, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom.

Essays should be no more than 2,500 words and will be judged on the basis of scholarship, imagination, and quality of writing.

All essays must be emailed or postmarked by Friday, February 18, 2011.”

To learn more please visit: ISI Scholarship Info Page

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said that those who’d like to tell the difference between conservative bloggers and those who are conservative-in-name-only ought to check to see who posts a link to an article in the American Spectator called “The Ruling Class.” After reading the article, we decided to take Rush up on his call to post a link. It’s a good read, populist-but-intelligent, and has some of the same spirit that helped ignite the early conservative movement as an antidote to “Rockefeller” or “Country Club” Republicans. Congratulations to Professor Codevilla and the AmSpec staff!

(Apparently Rush has some following amongst conservative bloggers who might not otherwise link to American Spectator articles. A quick search for “American Spectator” reveals that, after only a short time online, the #2 natural spot occupied in the SERP goes to this particular article.)

ConstitutingAmerica.org is a new effort to educate young (and not so young) people about the United States Constitution from Cathy Gillespie, a longtime activist and political staffer who also happens to be married to former RNC chair Ed Gillespie and Janine Turner, a film and television star with substantial credits to her name and welcome home in Texas.

We just learned about the site from a tipster named Wil a couple of hours ago and we haven’t had a chance to fully check it out, but so far we like what we see. As today’s resource, we thought we’d point everyone to the constitution contest for elementary school, middle school, and high school students featured on the website. The contest awards prizes not only to a choice few essay writers, but also to singers and performers.

According to the website, the entry timeline is as follows:

“Electronic submissions due by 11:59 p.m. July 4 to WeThePeople917@yahoo.com. Mailed entries must
be postmarked by July 4. All entry submissions must be accompanied by the entry form, with signed
parental consent.

For contest rules and more helpful information, please feel free to click the thumbnail link, below:

ConstitutingAmerica.org is a new effort to educate young (and not so young) people about the United States Constitution from Cathy Gillespie, a longtime activist and political staffer who also happens to be married to former RNC chair Ed Gillespie and Janine Turner, a film and television star with substantial credits to her name and welcome home in Texas.

We just learned about the site from a tipster named Wil a couple of hours ago and we haven’t had a chance to fully check it out, but so far we like what we see. As today’s resource, we thought we’d point everyone to the constitution contest for elementary school, middle school, and high school students featured on the website. The contest awards prizes not only to a choice few essay writers, but also to singers and performers.

According to the website, the entry timeline is as follows:

“Electronic submissions due by 11:59 p.m. July 4 to WeThePeople917@yahoo.com. Mailed entries must
be postmarked by July 4. All entry submissions must be accompanied by the entry form, with signed
parental consent.

For contest rules and more helpful information, please feel free to click the thumbnail link, below:

ConstitutingAmerica.org is a new effort to educate young (and not so young) people about the United States Constitution from Cathy Gillespie, a longtime activist and political staffer who also happens to be married to former RNC chair Ed Gillespie and Janine Turner, a film and television star with substantial credits to her name and welcome home in Texas.

We just learned about the site from a tipster named Wil a couple of hours ago and we haven’t had a chance to fully check it out, but so far we like what we see. As today’s resource, we thought we’d point everyone to the constitution contest for elementary school, middle school, and high school students featured on the website. The contest awards prizes not only to a choice few essay writers, but also to singers and performers.

According to the website, the entry timeline is as follows:

“Electronic submissions due by 11:59 p.m. July 4 to WeThePeople917@yahoo.com. Mailed entries must
be postmarked by July 4. All entry submissions must be accompanied by the entry form, with signed
parental consent.

For contest rules and more helpful information, please feel free to click the thumbnail link, below:

So, Kevin McCarthy’s AmericaSpeakingOut.com is a hit! We’ve mentioned Kevin on several occasions including in regards to his early WhipCast Blackberry App. His latest web and mobile effort appears to be exponentially more ambitious… and even more in tune with the populist language and themes of a new generation of conservative activists.

The site looks like pligg, but seems to have custom ASP scripting behind it. Conservatives never really took to Digg or Yahoo’s Buzz or Mixx, but we believe that was largely because of those website’s communities of young liberals who simply do not welcome dissent. AmericaSpeakingOut’s immediate success seems to confirm our suspicions regarding this.

Here’s Kevin explanation of the new website from NewsMax.tv:

You can visit AmericaSpeakingOut.com by clicking the thumbnail link, below:

Today’s rebellion resource is not about political advocacy in particular, but internet advocates in general might find it handy. CopyPasteCharacter.com is a site that provides you with copy and paste character insertion so that you don’t always need to learn or lookup html character codes for symbols like: ™ ★ ☆ ¾ † ✔ § ☟ ✄.

Just click the thumbnail link below to check out CopyPasteCharacter.com:

For today’s resource, we wanted to highlight a blog post from RightWingNews.com’s John Hawkins entitled, “Special Report:  A Briefing on All the Key Republican Senate Primaries.”

Whether we like it or not, a large percentage of media coverage centers around the candidates and players in key Senate races.  If you read as many blogs and online news sources as I do, you become very used to seeing names like Rubio, Lowden, Buck, and Devore, but if you don’t live in the state in which those races are heating up, you might not really know who the players are, what their idealogical leanings are, or what chances they have of success.  Ultimately, without context, the horserace coverage isn’t really that interesting.  Since too many bloggers and reporters assume you have the pertinent background, you end up reading about how one politician surged in the polls or made a controversial remark or reported a surprise in fundraising strength, but you don’t know why you should care or what it matters in terms of the big picture.

That’s why we think many of our readers will benefit greatly from Hawkins’ brief breakdown of each of the key Senate races.  Hawkins organizes the races by state and provides only the essentials in each summmary.  Here’s his entry on the Utah race:

State Nevada
Election date: June 8, 2010
Seat currently held by: Harry Reid (D)
Candidates: Danny Tarkanian vs. Sue Lowden vs. Sharron Angle vs. John Chachas
Latest Poll Numbers: Las Vegas Review-Journal (April 12): Lowden 45% vs. Tarkanian 27%
Candidate endorsement: None yet.
Analysis: Lowden and Jerry Tarkanian’s son  Danny  are the two heavy hitters here on the GOP side. Both of them are handily beating Harry Reid in polls and the fake “Tea Party” candidate, Scott Ashjian, is already starting to fade hard. My best guess is that Ashjian, who’s had nothing to do with the Tea Party movement, was enticed into the race to try to draw off enough support to allow Harry Reid to win. That looks unlikely at this point although Reid will have an immense war chest that gives him a chance to win despite the fact that he’s extremely unpopular in Nevada.

Feel free to click the thumbnail link below to read the entirety of Hawkins’ Senate Race Roundup:

At this stage, I could build a platform very similar to Microsoft’s recently announced TownHall product using free open source software solutions, but there’s no doubt that the turnkey nature of the product will tempt candidates who don’t want to fiddle around or burn time and money for a consultant to build them a custom solution based on Drupal, CiviCRM, Joomla, or WordPress.

Does this mean the end of Netboots and other similar services aimed at Republican candidates? Maybe, but I’m not sure. Ultimately, turnkey solutions are attractive if they’ve been proven to yield results. In internet marketing we try to split test everything to fine tune copy and design down to the last pixel, but that is difficult to do within the context of a political campaign. Will the stock Campaign Ready suite perform with your demographic in your district? If recent precedent suggests that it will, I would be surprised if campaign consultants begin recommending it. That’s why I predict we’ll see the product begin to capture market share if it yields results during this election cycle, but even if Microsoft markets to consultants by offering them a new Mercedes SLS with the silver paint job that just seems to glow, I can’t see this package dominating the Republican market until after November and I don’t see it ever dominating the Democrat market.

The Weekly Standard will feature a new article on the GOP tech scene in its April 26, 2010 issue. The article, by Mary Katharine Ham, is a fascinating feature story highlighting the state of the Republican tech scene today and dropping the names of a few players that we’ve mentioned before on Daily Uprising.

For instance, here’s an interesting insight into one of the many ways Scott Brown’s fledgling campaign used technology to make itself look bigger that it initially was:

“The use of mobile technology, which Harris said never really hit its stride on the McDonnell campaign, became invaluable for the Brown campaign. Every time their opponent Martha Coakley appeared on a radio show, Brown’s campaign texted supporters with the phone number of the radio station. When Coakley started taking calls, the first few were always Brown supporters. This changed the perception of the race for radio listeners, and succeeded in rattling Coakley, who wasn’t expecting such vocal opposition in the deep-blue state.”

And here’s a short paragraph describing a new form of social media based prognostication:

“A case study of the Brown campaign’s social media presence by Word Stream, a search engine marketing company, actually identified Brown’s momentum before polling or the political class did. Their final count found he had a ten to one advantage in web traffic, ten to one in YouTube views, three to one in Twitter followers, and four to one in Facebook followers.”

We recommend the article for those who like to follow the industry, but we’re a little disappointed to see that the discussion focuses around paid consultants. If there is any lesson to be learned from the Left’s rise to online dominance in the 90s, it is that effective internet advocacy is rarely the result of top-down planning from consultants in D.C. The original band of Lefty bloggers were individuals from outside of D.C. who had little formal or monetary connection to the political establishment. While the article is focusing on consultants with some prestige, the real surge from the right has come in the form of citizen activists on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and (cringe) Ning.