Hey protesters, tell me something I haven't heard

By Steve Sexton
3:30 AM, 3/04/2003

In his San Jose Mercury News column last week, Dennis Rockstroh said he was impressed by the debating skills of both those for and against affirmative action at the "affirmative action" bake sale the Berkeley College Republicans held last Wednesday. Rockstroh is only half right. The "against" side did debate well, the other side didn't. Rockstroh commented that if only the two sides would listen to each other, the future of this country would be brighter:

"I was impressed by their skills as debaters and their generally sound judgments. If these are our future leaders, we will be in good hands.
If only they would listen to each other."
But if I listened to the other side, all I would learn is that I am a racist and an idiot, just like our president. The other side didn't have any new information to offer. They didn't have any reasoned argument to add to the debate. A group of forty or so people hurled question after question at me and a few other Republican students who stood on Sproul Plaza promoting the bake sale. But they didn't have answers for the few questions we were able to slip in between their chanting of "Racist! Racist! Racist!" and their personal attacks on us and President Bush.

Most of the students supporting affirmative action on Sproul Plaza that day were forced to concede it isn't a perfect system. "But what do you propose we do instead," they asked. My answer, which I had to repeat many times that day, is that we fix the problem and not try to cover it up years after the problem began. I propose that we fix the inner city schools that disproportionately fail minority children. And the way to fix them is not to throw more money at them, but rather to inject market forces into the education system by giving parents the choice of which schools their children attend. The solution to the problem is school vouchers, not more money, and certainly not affirmative action years later.

A school voucher that would give parents 3-4,000 dollars to spend at a school other than the public school would give poor parents the chance to get their kids out of failing public schools. The public school would still receive some of the taxpayer money for students who chose to get their education elsewhere, they just wouldn't have to teach him. If all the students left a failing school, it would shutdown, as it should, instead of being propped up by more and more money.

By introducing competition into the education system, we could ensure only the best schools were teaching our kids. Parents and students could vote with their feet, leaving the bad schools for the good ones.

"But there aren't enough private schools," the others rejoined, exposing their ignorance of the free market system. If there were increased demand for private schools, more would open up. This is clear from simple supply and demand theory from any introductory econ course.

"But it would mark the end of public education, and that's undemocratic," they said. But again, they are wrong. It wouldn't be the end of public education, only the end of a government monopoly on education. Private schools teach students better for about $1,000 less per student, so the end to a government monopoly would be a good thing. The public would continue to provide for education, but the education through the voucher system, would also be available outside the bureaucratic confines of the government.

Unwilling to concede that school vouchers would be a solution to the problem, the protesters resorted to changing the subject. So our debate about affirmative action morphed into a debate about the possible war in Iraq, the liberation of Afghanistan, President Bush, and whether he knew about 9-11 in advance.

One protester argued that it would take 50 more 9-11s to replicate the human loss the United States has inflicted over the past several years around the world. Another group argued that Afghanistan has not been liberated and that Hamed Karzai, the leader of the new Afghanistan, hates the United States despite the fact that US soldiers comprise his personal security detail and the fact that US soldiers have died blocking Karzai from the bullets of terrorists. They tried to argue that we have done nothing to help Afghanistan despite the fact that our army is rebuilding their hospitals and schools, despite the fact that Afghans elected their own government after we toppled the Taliban. Despite the fact that women are in school for the first time in 25 years. Despite the fact that the Afghan people can now listen to music, shave their beards, and shed their burqas.

Rockstroh again on the debate he witnessed: "Debates like this could lead to a solution. If only both sides would listen to each other."

I refuse to listen to people who call our president a moron and resort to personal attacks. I won't listen to people who refuse to acknowledge incontrovertible facts. I decline to listen to people who concoct conspiracy theories to support their hatred for America. I refuse to listen to people who can't distinguish between casualties intentionally inflicted by demented terrorists who fly planes into buildings and those that are accidents in a war to rid the world of terror and liberate an oppressed people. I don't have anything to learn from those people, contrary to what the San Jose Mercury News may think. And God willing, none of those people will be the future leaders of this country.