Below is a feature of me that was an excerpt in a New York Times article about young conservatives. I was interviewed at a leadership conference hosted by Turning Point USA, which I attended in the summer of 2018. The link to the NYT site: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/us/young-conservatives-turning-point-usa.htm
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About 700 teenage conservatives visited the nation’s capital this week for a four-day leadership conference organized by Turning Point USA, a group founded in 2012 to promote activism skills among high school and college students and help young conservatives network with leaders in the movement.
Many of the biggest names in the Trump administration and conservative activist circles, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who echoed the crowd’s chants of “lock her up” during his speech to the conference on Tuesday), former White House spokesman Sean Spicer, Donald Trump Jr. and billionaire Mark Cuban, led sessions at the conference about battling liberal college bias, opposing big government, protecting the Second Amendment and promoting free markets.
We sat down with a few attendees to hear what it’s like for them to be red in schools they say are overwhelmingly blue. The interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Mason Scioneaux, 18, is from Vacherie, La., and will be a freshman this fall at the University of Mississippi.
Why did you come here?
A friend and I started a political science group during our junior year of high school. We saw a lack of political interest on both sides. It was the 2016 election, a huge time to voice your political opinions. We’ve been very active in south Louisiana, making connections with local politicians. We saw the opportunity to attend the summit, and the slate of speakers was very impressive.
It’s important to be politically open-minded, not necessarily to subscribe to a certain person, whether it’s President Trump or Hillary Clinton. For me, it’s important to listen and decide for myself what I believe to be right and true.
What were the political beliefs of your classmates?
Our high school was kind of split between conservatives and liberals. Our community was like that, too. The parish my high school is in is very liberal, and the parish I live in is split. It’s an area you can’t really define, between conservative Baton Rouge and more liberal New Orleans. My high school is about 70 percent white. The friend I’m here with is a conservative Latino.
I think this generation is now getting more opinionated than any generation before. We’re more politically aware, and it’s definitely because of social media. People go on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and have access to so much direct information, like what President Trump tweeted. They’re not just voting as their parents vote. Young people are being fed information, they don’t have to seek it. On one hand, it’s an era of conservatism aligned with Trump. I’m a Trump supporter, but I’m going to criticize him. You get more moderate conservatives who are more open-minded than others, fiscally conservative but more socially liberal. Blindly following any person is what gets us into trouble.
What is your vision for America?
The biggest problem in America is polarization. It would be refreshing to see people on both sides come together to discuss how to fix our problems. Today it seems everyone is either on the deep right or deep left, with just name-calling and personal attacks. We need less politics and more problem-solving. We have to be willing to compromise, both sides have to give and take. One thing I’d like to see is term limits on members of Congress. It would put pressure on them not to be complacent and to work for the people’s interests, rather than political lobbyists.
Where do you get your information?
I’ll go on Google News and open articles from Fox News, CNN, Politico and The New York Times. If you’re always getting news from CNN, that’s going to make you a liberal. If it’s from Fox News, that’s going to make you conservative. I try to stay aware. Writing off climate change, that it’s a hoax, is over the top. Ignoring the problem and denying it isn’t going to do anything.