PS-YAF is a conservative student group at PSU-UP dedicated to advancing individual freedom, free enterprise, and personal responsibility on campus and beyond. Students interested in these ideals are encouraged to join and attend our meetings!
Penn State Young Americans for Freedom (PS-YAF) was founded in 1992 as an organization dedicated to the principles of individual freedom, free enterprise, and personal responsibility. As a student organization on the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University, PS-YAF is dedicated to promoting the principles of liberty and free enterprise among college students in a time when increasingly liberal university officials seek to indoctrinate all students with their beliefs.
PS-YAF is recognized nationwide as one of the foremost campus conservative groups. The key to PS-YAF's success has always been a passionate and energetic group of students who refuse to be silenced. For 20 years, PS-YAF has ensured that the students at Penn State are free to hear both sides of many issues, despite liberal efforts to the contrary. All students who are interested in the ideals of PS-YAF are encouraged to join us and attend weekly meetings. The rewards of membership are great and will last a lifetime!
Sharon Statement
"Adopted in Conference, at Sharon, Connecticut, in conference September 10 - 13, 1960."
IN THIS TIME of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths.
WE, as young conservatives believe:
THAT foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
THAT liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
THAT the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
THAT when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
THAT the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
THAT the genius of the Constitution - the division of powers - is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;
THAT the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
THAT when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation, that when it takes from one to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;
THAT we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies…
THAT the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
THAT the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with this menace; and
THAT American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?
