Day: June 12, 2001

Kendra Okonski recently wrote an excellent article on libertarian activism that ran Liberty magazine. A longer version of the article is on the CounterProtest.Net site, Taking our message to the streets.

Which is not to say that I necessarily agree with Okonski about the prospects for libertarian activism. Okonski holds up the anti-globalization movement as an example of a successful political movement, but I think she vastly overestimates the success of that movement (at least in the United States). The anti-globalization movement is largely a made-for-TV event. There is a lot to be said in favor of such movements, but do they really have any sort of lasting impact? I’m skeptical.

Second, like most libertarian commentators (especially those who have never been part of or worked closely with Left wing protest movements), Okonski ignores what I think is the fundamental problem with libertarian activism: how do you build a mass movement based on a highly individualist political philosophy?

Go to any left wing protest or hang around left wing groups and one word pops up repeatedly: solidarity. Leftist are always in solidarity with this group or that oppressed people or even the animals of the world. I don’t want to psychoanalyze people I disagree with, but one of the major appeals of Leftist political participation is the built-in community and social structure. They’re not just fighting for themselves, they’re working to free their oppressed brethren in Indonesian sweat shops.

Compare and contrast that to the libertarian philosophy which is basically, “Government, please leave me (and everyone else) the hell alone to do our own thing.” This is a view which Leftists have occasionally advocated, but libertarians really mean it. Regardless of whether or not libertarianism is correct, building a large, effective mass movement like the Left has done with the anti-globalization movement is going to be extremely difficult.

So what are we to do? My advice is this: be outrageous.

Like Okonski, for several years in the 1990s I helped run a campus libertarian group. On one occasion, a campus feminist group was leading protests against the stud net newspaper demanding that it stop running ads for a local strip club. After a little finagling we managed to arrange an appearance by several of the dancers at the club on campus to talk about their jobs and the controversy. We even created a cheesy flyer resembling the strip club ads which featured a “For One Night Only: Strip Club Dancers Appearing in Student Union”-style headline.

Anyway, while putting the flyers up on campus, an economics professor I knew who was very committed to the free market cornered me, and he was not happy to say the least. Angrily holding up one of the flyers he demanded, “Do you really think this is the best way to spread these kind of ideas?” Well, several hundred people showed up, all overwhelmingly in support of the newspaper.

Look, whatever your political cause is, you’re probably going to lose. You might as well have fun and make a point while doing it. Okonski mentions CounterProtest’s appearance at an anti-IMF protest where one of their members dressed up as a pig holding up a sign that said “No more pork for the IMF.” She related that the anti-IMF protesters supported the pig but became confused when they realized he was part of the libertarian crowd.

That is exactly the sort of thing that the libertarian movement needs. Will it result in an end to corporate welfare and IMF aid? Probably not, but its a helluva lot more fun than sitting around writing boring press releases and endless economic analyses of the economic efficiency of foreign aid.

Just don’t fool yourself into think that’s going to change the world. As the anti-globalization protesters have learned, garnering media attention is easy. Actually changing public policy is a totally different animal.

Source:

Taking our message to the streets. Kendra Okonski, CounterProtest.Net, 2001.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld immigration laws which make it much more difficult for foreign-born individuals with American fathers to obtain U.S. citizenship than for foreign-born individuals whose mothers are American. The National Women’s Law Center had argued that sexual distinction violated the guarantee of equal protection before the law.

For children born of mothers who are American citizens, citizenship is all but automatic. For a child born outside the United States whose father is an American citizen, but whose mother is not, however, the barrier is much higher. Specifically, somebody must begin a formal action to prove paternity before the child reaches his or her 18th birthday.

The case before the court involved Tuan Ahn Nguyen. Nguyen was born in Vietnam to an American serviceman and a Vietnamese mother. Nguyen’s father, Joseph Boulais, obtained custody of the Nguyen and brought him back to live in the United States at the end of the Vietnam War. Boulais failed, however, to establish legal paternity and and never attempted to have his son made a naturalized citizen.

In the early 1990s, Nguyen plead guilty to two counts of sexual abuse of a minor and was sentenced to 16 years in jail. In 1995, the Immigration and Naturalization Service decided to deport Nguyen back to Vietnam. Boulais went to court and DNA evidence proved that he was indeed Ngueyn’s father, but the INS ruled that since Boulais failed to establish legal paternity before his son’s 18th birthday that the results of the DNA test were irrelevant.

In upholding the INS rules, the Supreme Court did little more than argue on behalf of age-old sexual stereotypes. According to the majority opinion,

A gender-based classification withstands equal protection scrutiny if it serves important governmental objectives and the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives. United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533. Congress’ decision to impose different requirements on unmarried fathers and unmarried mothers is based on the significant difference between their respective relationships to the potential citizen at the time of birth…

Writing for the dissenters was Sandra Day O’Connor who wrote,

Under the present law, the statute on its face accords different treatment to a mother who is by nature present at birth and a father who is by choice present at birth even though those two individuals are similarly situated with respect to the “opportunity” for a relationship. The mother can transmit her citizenship at birth, but the father cannot do so in the absence of at least one other affirmative act. The different statutory treatment is solely on account of the sex of the similarly situated individuals. This type of treatment is patently inconsistent with the promise of equal protection of laws.

Source:

Parent’s Sex May Be Factor in Citizenship, Court Rules. Charles Lane, The Washington Post, June 12, 2001.

Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS (PDF). Supreme Court of the United States.

The American Association of University Women recently released a follow-up to its 1993 Hostile Hallways study of sexual harassment. The 2001 version claims that sexual harassment in American schools is at almost endemic levels despite widespread adoption of sexual harassment policies in those schools. But there is still a lot of debate over exactly what the AAUW is measuring and what, if anything, should be done about it.

AAUW certainly presents some headline-generating numbers. It surveyed students in the 8th through 11th grades at 2,064 public schools and found that 83 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys reported experiencing at least one incident of harassment. One in four students said they experienced harassment “often.”

A major problem with the AAUW study, however, is that it includes such a wide range of actions under sexual harassment that the reader begins to suspect that the small number of students who said they had never experienced such harassment simply didn’t understand the questions in the survey.

Among other things the AAUW considers sexual harassment, for example, are rumors, sexually explicit jokes and gestures, graffiti (!), and taunting. Even speculation about sexual identity is considered harassment; the AAUW explicitly identified as non-physical harassment statements that claim a given student is homosexual.

Is it any surprise with such a broad definition of harassment that 35 percent of students reported than they experienced their first incident in elementary school?

The AAUW says that it is not interested in a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment, but at the same time Executive Director Jacqueline Woods seems surprised that, “While students say they are aware of school policies dealing with sexual harassment, increased awareness has not translated into fewer incidents of sexual harassment in school life.”

As Cathy Young pointed out to Fox News,

When we discuss this we really have to look at the underlying issue of how we define sexual harassment and bullying. If they basically define bullying as anytime someone says something offensive to you, well as much as I can’t condone that behavior, you’re always going to have kids who say mean and hurtful things. I don’t know if you can police every sexual joke said in the hallway. I’m not sure this is something you can legislate.

Sources:

Critics say politics distorts findings in sex harassment study. Kelley Beaucar, Fox News, June 7, 2001.

Sexual harassment widespread in nation’s schools, new AAUW report finds. American Association of University Women, Press Release, 2001.