Liberty's Flame is a conservative (not necessarily Republican) paper put on by the Young Conservatives Foundation (YCF), a nonprofit registered corporation that exists solely for the purpose of putting out the paper. YCF gets its funding from grants from other conservative organizations and advertising space. Unlike the liberal papers on campus, students do not subsidize its production.
Most (or possibly all) members of the YCF board are or have recently been members of the Davis College Republicans
AS PAPERs cannot produce the quality of printing they would like, and they have the resources to produce it without AS PAPERs, so it is printed elsewhere, possibly by a company in Sacramento. They did print one issue a couple years back through AS PAPERs, which was pretty hilarious because Jon Otero wrote about how they were abandoning their principles by getting public funding.
Speculation
A publication unleashed by the Davis College Republicans.
I am pretty sure this is a libertarian publication and not republican? —PhilipNeustrom
- Oh come off of the high horse. The Davis Libertarians like the death penalty and hate abortion. How the hell is that libertarian? It isn't. It's republicans that think the word "republican" is bad so they attach to the term "libertarian" cause I don't know - they like guns. I really don't know. There was a pro-choice rally and some guy got arrested there a few years back for protesting against it. He claimed to be a Libertarian. Some people don't see this as incongruent. But if you start wanting to limit personal freedom and support economic freedom then you are, by the Libertarian Party's definition, a republican - so yeah, get with it. —ChristopherMckenzie
- Keep in mind that there are several major flavors of Libertarian political philosophy, one major branch of which is highly anti-corporation and anti-capitalism. Libertarians believe in full rights to the individual which are given away by compact, some by social agreement (government) and others by individual consent. There are quite a few systems that fit into that, from cooperative communism to democratic socialism to capitalism (the anti-corporate philosophy holds that only very small groups can form equal relationships and agreements). Two forms of government which do not fit in are authoritarian fascism or socialism, which may be way people are turning to the label Libertarian, since those tend to be in vogue at the national level right now from our two "representative" parties. There are plenty of pro-life Libertarians... if you accept that life begins at conception, you have to see abortion as the ultimate removal of liberty by force — murder. It all boils down to when you see life as beginning. I don't see a clump of cells as having rights until a bit later, but there is zero incongruency in a pro-life Libertarian. Like most arguments on the issue, it hinges on when the biological act turns into a human with rights. — jw
- Soooo ... some of these "branches" are indistinguishable from some "branches" of the Republican Party except by name alone. I have met a lot of true Libertarians who I could not call Republicans. One guy I know, for instance, after being robbed, went to a private detective because he didn't believe in using the government's established police force for assistance. Some of the supposed Davis Libertarians are pro drug control and anti gay marriage. I'm not saying that there aren't Libertarians out there, but a lot of the supposed ones I meet are just confused Republicans who found a new SAT word to use. —ChristopherMckenzie
- Certainly. But that has nothing to do with Liberty's Flame being Libertarian or not. Does it claim to be? It was created by the DCR and claims to be conservative, which doesn't seem to indicate they are self-identifying as Libertarian. Phillip said that they might, but phrased it as a question. I have met plenty of people who seemed to not understand their claimed political affiliation, but that has little to do with this particular publication. Incidently, the large paeloconservative branch of Republicans can very arguably be considered Libertarian (and tends to support the ideals of JFK and reject much of Bush's actions), so there are overlapping groups. I'd imagine, like most college publications, the leanings of the publication depends upon who happens to be writing and editing the publication at any given year. — jw
Liberty's Flame is an ASPAPERS publication created by the DCR. -DanMasiel
Definitely DCR. I have a copy of one of the best issues, if you're interested. - BrentLaabs
Actually it's not put out by DCR, YCF and DCR are two different groups on campus...true there is a bit of overlap in the membership but they are in fact different entities.
