But first...these are terrible times. They are especially difficult for people, like us, who treasure peace and freedom.
I don't know what to expect from the world in the next few months. I haven't even recovered from the shock of seeing the World Trade Center collapse before my eyes. The political vista it left behind is new and frightening, largely because it is so unpredictable.
I would never have predicted, for example, that airports would become mini-police states, patrolled by national guardsmen with M16s -- mercifully gone now -- airports where customers are treated like criminal suspects with no civil liberties... yet it happened overnight and with next to no protest. I could go on and on...the Patriot Act, war with Iraq which may be inevitable...
But I won't. I mention these things only because I want you to know that my optimism isn't because I am blind to the real blow that has been inflicted on freedom since 9-11.
My optimism comes from turning one question over and over in my mind: the question is.... What can be accomplished politically...right here in North America and right now?
When I look at the world at large, I despair. I am less likely than ever to influence anything that happens in the Middle East, Iraq, North Korea... but then, my influence over foreign policy has always been next to nothing. Which doesn't mean I don't speak out. I am anti-war and I state my position clearly, loudly... but I don't state it with the expectation of being able to affect anything...at least not yet, not as things stand.
Instead, I concentrate on the things I can affect. I concentrate on grassroots movements -- in which individual voices can make an incredible difference. Where individuals can exert incredible power. And it is in the grassroots movements that are springing and spreading like wildfire across North America that I see the future of liberty. I see it in the flood of people who -- since 9-11 -- are buying guns to defend themselves; in the growing number of parents who are rejecting public education and homeschooling; in the men's movement, especially the fathers who have lost access to their children because the family court system is anti-male in custody cases.
These -- and many others -- are grassroots movements. They are movements that begin with isolated individuals who become so dissatisfied with something that deeply affects their lives -- maybe the public school system, maybe minimum sentencing laws that have been applied to their son or daughter -- that they say "no." People who have never said "no" to authority before, stand up and refuse to sit down. They usually begin by saying "no" on a local level, to a local school board, at a town meeting or to district court. But if the injustice they're complaining about is widespread, the voices multiply quickly...and they collectively become a powerful political force. Perhaps the most powerful political force there is: the voice of the people.
I am not advocating democracy or majority rule, here. All I am saying is that populist causes -- causes that profoundly touch the daily lives of common people -- are the ones that ultimately shape society. They are the ones that lead to real reform and sometimes to revolution.
What are these causes? Look at history...or at the society surrounding you. They are...land, sexual freedom, labor -- the ability to make enough money to feed your children...the right to educate them according to your values, the right to be part of their lives. The causes aren't abstract, theoretical issues like the gold standard...and I'm not slamming the gold standard. But grassroots movements arise when government interferes with intimate and immediate issues of people's lives.
And the political beauty of libertarianism is that it is a populist ideology. Libertarianism deals with fundamental rights that are possessed by all human beings -- it defends life, liberty, and property. It says to the poorest, most disadvantaged person in society that he or she has the same rights and to same degree as the richest and most powerful. Libertarianism is a profoundly non-elitist. It is the politics of the common man.
And, if you look at the history of libertarianism, it is the history of populist causes, many of which were overwhelmingly successful. You can talk about the early 19th century anti-corn law league in Britain or the 18th century American Revolution that led to the formation of the United States...these causes did not go to the powers that be, to the policy makers of society and say "please change for us." They went to the people and created a groundswell.
Right now I want to talk about two examples that are closer in time to the current movement. I consider the first to be one of the most important political accomplishments of libertarianism... In 1862, the first homestead laws were passed by congress. They provided that any citizen -- either the head of a family or someone 21 years of age -- could acquire a tract of federally owned land, not to exceed 160 acres. Between 1862 - 1890, 370,000 homesteading applications were approved. A huge amount of government land was privatized.
Two quick side points...first, it was too bad congress was involved at all because it doesn't deserve any credit. I'll be dealing with that in a minute.
Second, I am not trying to downplay the politics and corrupt land deals that ultimately surrounded the Homestead Act, for which congress does deserve credit. For example speculators with political connections received huge tracts that sold at inflated rates. But even the speculators were private landowners and the upshot over generations is that most of the land passed from government into private hands where it is still held today by individuals and families...not by government.
I said congress didn't deserve credit. The Homestead Act came about largely through the efforts of one man named George Henry Evans, who was basically libertarian. Evans was a working class man living in New York. He looked around him and thought that the starving laborers, the factory workers he saw deserved a choice. They should have the option to homestead the vast western land belonging to the federal government.
Evans began his crusade for homesteading in 1829 with only the support of personal friends and a few sympathetic newspapers. By 1850, of the 2000-some newspapers published in the United States, more than 600 supported homesteading. And this -- the groundswell populist support stirred by Evans -- is responsible for opening up the west to private ownership. What congress is responsible for is taking an issue it could no longer ignore and attaching its own political agenda...in this case, a civil war agenda.
Another 19th century libertarian grassroots movement -- also centered in the large northeastern cities -- was labor reform.
I am passionate about libertarian history. A lot of my career has been spent reading the 19th century periodicals and pamphlets that constitute the history of libertarianism in America. And I can flat out tell you...it is a myth that the left was the champion of labor or the working man. In the early to mid 19th century, libertarians were the pioneers in that area. And the credibility that the left, even now, enjoys because it promotes itself as the voice of working class belongs in equal measure to libertarianism. This is just one reason it is important to remember history.
The New England Labor Reform League was founded in 1869 with the mission statement of "free contracts, free money, free markets." And, again, it did not go to politicians and policy makers for reform. It went to the people, it went into factories and homes.
One of its practical goals was to provide information on birth control to factory workers...because unwanted children were viewed as a major cause -- if not the major cause of women's economic poverty. The Reform League organized "lady agents." these were sales women who toured the countryside with publications issued by the co-operative press, the publishing arm of the league. The women entered factories to sell pamphlets to the workers, went town to town talking to the editors of local papers, they stood on street corners delivering lectures to passers-by. Despite being arrested repeatedly, the lady agents sold hundreds of thousands of pamphlets to factory workers alone in New England.
How effective was the New England Labor Reform League? Judge for yourself from one incident. In November 1877, the libertarian Ezra Heywood -- the main force behind the league -- was arrested on obscenity charges under the Comstock laws for delivering a speech advocating the use of birth control. In protest over his arrest, a petition for his release received over 70,000 signatures -- the largest number of signatures in U.S. history to that date. Six months after his imprisonment, Heywood received a full pardon from President Hayes.
Both of these -- homesteading and labor reform -- are examples of how grassroots libertarianism, which speaks to the common person about daily concerns, can catch fire and become an irresistible political force. And that's true whether or not your ultimate goal is to convince people to vote libertarian or simply interested in spreading the ideas. The first step is always to earn their respect by fighting for the common causes that we share.
I began by saying that my talk was about political optimism despite the war. I want to return to that theme and to the current day.
The libertarian Randolph Bourne once said -- about WWI -- "war is the health of the state." For one thing it ushers in massive expansion of government: it leads people to trade their liberty for security -- which, of course, destroys both.
But an unpopular war -- which I believe the war on terrorism will increasingly become, especially if we get involved in a land war in Asia, especially if the body bags with young men start coming back... an unpopular war is virtually a guarantee of political and social change. The only question is "which direction will that change ultimately take?"
For example, after the Vietnam War, the left used the political credibility it had gained by opposing the war as a springboard to power. The left finally ended up with a new form of liberalism called political correctness...
I'm going to dwell on political correctness for a minute because it sets up the next point I want to make.
Political correctness says that certain ideas, attitudes and peaceful behaviors should be prohibited by law because they are offensive to women, minorities or other "protected" classes of people. It also argues that certain ideas should be encouraged -- translation: enforced -- by law.
I want to use political correctness as an example --first -- of how change happens in our society and -- second -- why this should make you optimistic.
And to refine my talk even further, I want to use feminism, which -- at least, in its current mainstream form -- is an expression of political correctness. That is, PC feminism says ideas, attitudes, and peaceful behavior that are considered offensive toward women should be prohibited. Ones beneficial to women should be encouraged by law.
Let me give you a sense of how powerfully PC feminism has effected our world and why...through one example.
Sexual harassment.
By which don't mean the physical abuse of women...laws against that have long existed. I mean the sexual harassment industry, as Daphne Patai calls it in her book "Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism." I mean the laws and institutions that regulate which attitudes toward women can be manifested, what language about women can be expressed ...in the workplace and in academia.
Sexual harassment is probably PC feminism's greatest success story. Laws against sexual harassment now regulate every business and organization of any real size, as well as every university and college in North America. Government reaches into the private sector and regulates attitudes and words to an extent that would be unimaginable in the 1960s, even in the '70s. Yet the term "sexual harassment" only entered our culture about twenty years ago.
As a legal concept, it was introduced by the radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon in a book published in 1979 entitled "The Sexual Harassment of Working Women." MacKinnon's point was never to stop violence in workplace. she argued that sexual harassment -- words, images, and attitudes expressed in the private sector -- was a form of discrimination, a violation of civil rights, that should be handled by civil lawsuits and under the civil rights act. In 1980, the EEOC -- the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- expanded its guidelines to include sexual harassment. The first case that really established the idea of a hostile working environment was Meritor v. Vinson in 1986.
That's how recent they are -- the sexual harassment policies with which we live. Even though it impacts the lives of every person in this room and may well seriously impact the lives of your children, sexual harassment is only about twenty years old.
There is a real sense in which this is encouraging news. We hear over and over again that you can't change society, that one person doesn't make a difference. You can't fight city hall. Yet society was profoundly changed within two decades and the change came largely from the extraordinary efforts of one woman: Catharine MacKinnon. MacKinnon accomplished a great deal -- a great evil -- but a great deal in a very short time. This gives me real hope that extraordinary efforts in the opposite direction can tear down sexual harassment. And more quickly than it was constructed.
Twenty years is about as long as it takes for a generation of people to realize that something isn't working. That political correctness doesn't solve social problems...it creates them. And, again, I am using political correctness as just one example of how society is changing, how we are no longer satisfied with the old answers.
Political correctness is crumbling. It is losing ground in the court system: a recent case in which a judge found that the military was unduly discriminating against white men in favor of women and minorities is becoming common. Affirmative action is now being openly questioned -- and successfully so -- in state legislatures...something that would have been unheard of ten years ago.
Political change is in the air.
I lecture at universities...on campuses that are, generally speaking, bastions of left-wing politics and political correctness. Near the end of last year, I did a debating tour of various universities with a radical feminist named Kathleen Barry. The two topics we debated were pornography and prostitution...Barry being primarily known for her writing on the issue of prostitution.
I was surprised by the reception Kathleen and I received on the campus tour. To put it in a nutshell...I won the debates. The explanation could be simply that I'm a better debater than Kathleen. But, as much as I like that theory, it doesn't explain what happened. The audiences did not like what Kathleen had to say. It didn't matter if we were debating in front of a conservative campus, a liberal arts college, a small or large university. The audience gave her a cold, sometimes hostile response that visibly shook her. At the end of the tour, Kathleen told our lecture agent that she no longer intended to debate those subjects in public.
Political change is in the air.
Another sign is that the old institutions are crumbling. In feminism, organizations like the National Organization for Women -- NOW -- do not have political clout any more. I read an interesting news item a few months ago that reported on a "recruiting" session NOW held in Broward county, Florida. You may remember that Broward was one of the democratic/liberal counties in the "hanging chad" fiasco. Four women showed up to NOW's public forum. Three of them left midway. The void left by NOW is being filled by organizations like the free-market Independent Women's Forum which you see routinely interviewed on television alongside of or instead of representatives from NOW. Or, by my organization, ifeminists.com -- meaning individualist feminism -- which gets over half-a-million hits a month.
This is what happens in times of political and social change. Old solutions and old organizations falter. New solutions and new organization rise to fill the void. The ones that will succeed are not merely aggressive or well funded... I don't even think those are the most important factors. The successful solutions are the ones that reflect the concerns of ordinary people. And people are, for example, tired of women having privileges rather than equality.
I have been arguing against privilege for about twenty years now...and not getting very far. Until the last few years. In the last few years, there has been a palpable hunger growing for these ideas. So much so that about two years ago I was approached out-of-the-blue by Fox News and asked if I wanted to write a weekly column on feminism. I have no background in journalism. But I was saying the right things -- after saying the same thing for twenty years -- suddenly it was the right thing. Because it was something enough people suddenly wanted to hear.
And I don't think this hunger is unique to feminism. I see it everywhere. Earlier I mentioned the men's movement -- a grassroots movement that, if libertarians are smart, they will focus in on. The men's movement is protesting the privileges for women that are embedded in the law, especially in the family court system. It is an incredibly energetic, alive movement that is just ready to explode off the charts. It reminds me of nothing so much as feminism in the '60s when the movement became -- like that [snap of the fingers] -- a social force to be reckoned with.
What do I mean when I say the men's movement is about to explode? Let me tell you a story.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 43-year-old Derrick K. Miller walked up to a security guard at the entrance to the San Diego courthouse, where a family court had recently ruled against him on overdue child support. Clutching court papers in one hand, he drew out a gun with the other. Declaring, "you did this to me," he fatally shot himself through the skull.
Miller is not an isolated case. Consider Warren Gilbert who died of carbon monoxide poisoning, clutching a letter from the child protective service. Or Martin Romanchick — a New York city police officer who hanged himself after being denied access due to charges brought by his ex-wife, which the court later found to be frivolous.
There is an alarming rise in male suicides. According to a 1999 Surgeon General's report, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in America, with men being four times more likely to kill themselves than women. A round of studies suggests that one reason for the increase is the discrimination fathers encounter in family courts, especially regarding the denial of access to their children.
You can look at these men and say "well, things are tough all over", "rights are difficult for anyone to come by these days." But ask yourself one thing...what other category of people have their children taken away...not because of what they do but because of who they are?
The men's movement is about to explode and it is wide open to libertarian ideas. I know because I'm there.
Let me demonstrate the power of the men's movement and grassroots movements in general.
Let me tell you another story, this one concerning sexual harassment policies at universities, which comes from Patai's book "Heterophobia." "A very over-weight and by all accounts a very popular, competent professor responded to a taunt shouted-out in class by a female student. She rudely commented on the extreme 'size' of his chest: in response, he observed that she had no such problem. A witch-hunt of sexual harassment charges ensued. It was so extreme that the professor committed suicide. In a press release, the university's main concern was that the professor's death would not discourage other similarly "abused" women from "speaking out."
Check how you are feeling right now. If you feel "This was wrong. This must not be allowed to happen," then you are feeling the power of a grassroots movement, the power of common decency being converted into political will. And libertarianism should be there.
I want to change focus a bit. I've talked about the incredible power of the grassroots movements that have been rising for years now and how I think their progress is inevitable, like a rock rolling downhill.
What I want to do right now is return to the 19th century in order to discuss what I think libertarians today should do to become part of the new solutions that society is demanding. I want to go back in time because I think libertarians then did something right and we've lost sight of it.
One of the differences I see between 19th century libertarianism and the current movement lies in their attitudes toward the common man or woman...for want of a better term. By common man I mean those people who are not political, who focus their energies instead on making a decent living and caring for their families.
And who can blame them for that?
The 19th century movement considered working people to be the best and firmest foundation on which to build a free society. The three periodicals that constituted the backbone of early libertarianism -- The Word, Liberty, Lucifer the Light Bearer -- addressed the concerns of working men and women, rather than those of policy makers or the elite. Even Liberty -- the most intellectual of the three -- didn't speak down to the factory workers who were among its subscribers. Instead, it went far out of its way to include them. for example, Liberty that published from 1881-1908, realized that mass immigration from Europe had filled the factories with workers who had difficulty with English, even though they often spoke several other languages. So Liberty created a parallel German-language publication, entitled Libertas, so that the immigrants in factory jobs could access the ideas.
By contrast, contemporary libertarianism often seems to dismiss working people, sometimes with disdain. This is not a criticism of the LP: it is a criticism of the movement itself. The man on the street is often viewed as too stupid, too uninformed, too uninterested to understand libertarianism.
I have wondered for years where this attitude comes from. Part of it may be the influence of Ayn Rand -- one of my heroines -- who portrayed 'the solitary hero' who rises like cream from milk above the common herd. Certainly her novels portray 'the masses' in an incredibly unflattering light. Maybe working people are underrated because the intellectual leadership of the movement is top-heavy with university professors, intellectuals and investment gurus. Maybe the fact that the LP doesn't get a large enough slice of the popular vote makes libertarians view 'the masses' with antagonism.
Whatever the reason, the pages of the contemporary libertarian magazines are far more likely to discuss the gold standard or the constitution rather than the problems of a single mother who works two jobs and lives in fear that the IRS will discover she is declaring only one income.
Dismissing or patronizing the average people has caused a real tension in libertarianism. Using the LP as an example...and my criticism is constructive...electoral politics, as a strategy, focuses upon vote totals. That means the success of the LP is dependent on the good will and discernment of the average person.
Yet I've heard over and over again in the last few years that the masses are not interested in or not able to understand libertarian ideology, libertarian principles. I've been told that the ideas have to be presented to them in a simplistic manner, on an issue-by-issue basis -- for example, by pointing out the economic advantages of a particular tax cut without ever mentioning the underlying principle of being opposed to taxation in general.
I think this approach is disastrous for several of reasons...one of them is the great disrespect it shows for the common person upon which political success depends.
Another is that I flatly disagree with the idea that people are not interested in or not influenced by ideology. In fact, the notion is bizarre to me. The two most powerful, revolutionary forces in western history are both profoundly ideological and they were both embraced by working people: Christianity and Marxism. The American Revolution -- which many consider to be the defining libertarian moment in history -- was a grassroots working class revolution that was fueled by principles. And the principles, the ideas caught on and spread within about a ten-year period. In a now famous passage, John Adams wrote, "What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution...the revolution was in the minds of the people..." The actual fighting was sparked by specific events, such as the introduction of the stamp act, but only because the groundwork of ideology had been laid.
And in case it isn't crystal clear by now ...I am arguing that a return to ideology and respect for the common man is essential to libertarianism's success.
Before concluding, I want to make one more other point about strategy.
One of the mistakes I see people making is what I call "fighting the old wars instead of the new ones." Most of us are no longer part of the younger generation and we have a tendency to deal with the issues that were important to us in our formative years or view the world through that mindset. And I think that's natural...it's what used to be called the generation gap and I think we're on the other side of it now, the older side.
Let me give you an example. As a feminist, I am often asked to speak on pornography...and that's natural enough. I've written extensively on the issue and it will always be important...people will always be interested in discussing pornography. But I never address those subjects unless I am asked to do so because that is an old war of feminism.
In the '80s and into the '90s, the pornography debate tore the feminist movement to shreds: it wasn't even a debate....it was a bar room brawl. And when the howling had subsided, the freedom of speech side had won. Clearly and definitively. I'm not saying that pornography won't be banned or isn't being banned right now. Merely that it won't be feminist voices that are instrumental in banning it because anti-porn feminists do not have enough political support within their own movement to pull it off. If I were to argue the porn issue today -- as a new war -- I would argue against the religious right, not against feminists...and that's an entirely different battle.
So what, as a feminist, do I talk about? I try to concentrate on the new wars. Let me give you one last example of a grassroots issue. Midwifery. There is a concerted effort on the part of the medical establishment to destroy modern midwifery not by banning it but by making it too expensive to practice. In California, the AMA is pushing for one of two situations: midwives must have a physician's supervision for home births -- which is a costly matter -- or they must accept mandatory malpractice insurance. A midwife of my acquaintance assures me that the cost of coverage would be twice her annual income. And, so, midwives are choosing to practice "underground" -- without the required supervision or malpractice insurance.
But every time such a midwife transfers a woman in labor to a hospital for special care, the hospital now routinely complains to the medical board that the midwife is practicing without physician supervisor. Given that there are no lay-midwifery schools allowed in California, the state is effectively eroding the number of such midwives down to zero.
This is a new war. And, for me, the primary victim who needs defending is not the midwife but the millions of women who bear children and have a right to determine the circumstances of those births.
Whatever issue you are addressing, you should look for the new wars, the ones of this century, and not get caught up in fighting 20th century battles. Don't spend a lot of time battling affirmative action -- the issue is dead: we won. Address abortion...head on, instead. Forget detailed analysis of the welfare state. Talk instead about whether the state should pay reparations to descendants of slaves.
Two quick and easy ways to find out what the new wars are.... 1) keep track of court cases, and 2) listen to young people. if you don't know any...go on the internet and read gen-x and gen-next sites. Find out what they are passionate about. Find out what is consuming them and see if there's any common cause.
So...this is my case for optimism.
My final words are..."don't be discouraged." The war on terrorism is a terrible thing. It doesn't matter if you support it or oppose it -- the loss of life, the loss of liberties is...disheartening in either case.
Try to remember why you are a libertarian.
I am a libertarian because I love the ideas. I fell in love with Ayn Rand when I was 15 years old. Since then, the movement and I have had a rocky and sometimes unrequited romance. But, throughout what is decades now, the ideology has been what has held me...the principles.
If they can be captured in two words, they are "peace" and "freedom." In one word, "libertarianism." And nothing, nothing about that has changed.
Thank you.