14-year-old conservative author energizes Republican Party at rally
By Nick Hiltunen
Published in News on July 22, 2009 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/NICK HILTUNEN
Fourteen-year-old conservative author Jonathan Krohn speaks in Goldsboro on Saturday.
Jonathan Krohn, known to some as "Little Mr. Conservative," visited Goldsboro this weekend, espousing a message that trumpeted conservative ideals.
In a 20-minute speech to a crowd of about 50 people, Jonathan, 14, invoked the words of Adam Smith, Plato, and even Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken.
Jonathan delivered his speech at a "Freedom Rally" Saturday at The Commons off Center Street.
Also speaking were Bill Johnston from local radio station WGBR, Dallas Woodhouse from Americans for Prosperity, and Russ Alphin and Andie Brownlow from Citizens for Constitutional Liberties.
Although the 14-year-old said he wasn't "there to talk about (Franken)," he spent the first few minutes of his speech critiquing the freshman Minnesota senator's first few moments on the floor.
"Just as an aside, I call him Al Flaken," Jonathan said, in a delivery style that seemed to mimic conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. "You can ask me about that later."
Jonathan said Franken's decision to spend 10 minutes on a speech before questioning the Supreme Court justice nominee was a mistake.
"You don't give a 10-minute speech, because that's a third of your time," Jonathan said.
True to his word, Jonathan did not spend his entire 20-some minutes talking about Franken, moving on to the classic struggle between rich and poor in America.
The young conservative speaker said that the bipartisan American political system could easily be drawn by making comparisons between "rich" and "poor."
"The rich, obviously, run the private sector, and the poor do not run the private sector, if anyone runs it at all," Jonathan said. "The poor are so low down, according to the government ... and the government is able to manipulate them against the 'evil rich guy.' The rich guy, we (government) must tell him that 'We don't feel for him,' and you get this whole idea of a struggle."
Social programs have made "different sectors of the poor ... so reliant on government," Jonathan said. "It's this struggle that the government uses to manipulate the poor and destroy the rich, so they can in turn destroy the private sector and capitalism as we know it."
Jonathan said that the basic ideas of "liberalism" are complicated.
"We know the basic ideas of the Left, if you can call anything basic in liberalism," Jonathan said. "Everything ... in liberalism is so complicated. They try to make it so complicated that you can never figure out what they're doing."
Jonathan, who addressed the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, said liberals try to make sure the young conservative knows they have superior intellect.
"They go 'Hi. I'm an intelligent liberal. I know more than you, and you better know that by the time we're done talking,'" Jonathan said. "They try to tell me how complicated things are. Whenever I talk about any issues, one of the first things I get is 'But it's so complicated. You can't possibly understand it. There's not a real proper understanding.' Oh well, yes there is.
"By the time they do that, by the time we get back to the original issues, we don't exactly remember what we were talking about," Jonathan said.
The teenager also spent time critiquing what he called the "Cap and Trade Bill," a provision of climate change legislation. After being handed a copy of Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Jonathan said that he expected many in Congress had not read the provision, which he said was longer than Smith's book.
He also said that a number of pages had been added to the legislation at the last minute and that he believes lawmakers could not possibly understand it fully under such circumstances.
"See, the conservative understands that the individual is naturally free from the government, then it only follows that the idea must be understood in depth, not just at a small extent, or a basic extent, but it must be understood in depth," Jonathan said. "Instead of saying that the public and private sector ... are direct opposites of one another, they must be in harmony with one another."