“Are you a citizen of the United States or are you a citizen of the world?” Professor and Ambassador Ahmad Kamal, a retired career diplomat from Pakistan, asked students sitting in the second week of their diplomacy seminar, in my freshman year of college, in the fall of 2007. The entire class of intimidated college freshmen and sophomores raised their hands for “citizen of the world,” including this author. I was an undergraduate college student majoring in diplomacy and international relations, and from that moment on, I became aware of the extent of the leftist lean in this field.

The main attraction at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) each year is not just the speeches given by rank-and-file conservative politicians and celebrities, but rather with what goes on in the basement exhibition halls. From Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum to The John Birch Society (the parent organization of The New American) and to the highly controversial participation of GoProud, the exhibition halls this year were teeming with all sorts of participatory groups, each of which was trying to get its message across to as many like-minded people as possible.

In what reads like a passage from George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the government public school district for New Canaan, Connecticut, is considering a proposal from SecureRF, a local digital security company, to tag and track school property, such as textbooks, laptops — and also students — whether they are on or off campus.