Jason Kuznicki, Cato Institute research fellow and editor of Cato Unbound, nicely articulated a strict constitutional answer to this question, pointing out that nowhere in the Constitution is the word marriage mentioned. Therefore, Kuznicki argues, the federal government has no role whatsoever in marriage, gay or otherwise; the matter should be left to the states.

In order to justify a federal role in marriage, Kuznicki says, conservatives have to cede to progressives their fanciful view of the Constitution as a flexible document, and give up the idea that the Framers intended a federal government with limited and enumerated powers.

Thomas Peters, cultural director at the National Organization for Marriage, argues that “the purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and one another,” and that gay marriage fails to achieve this purpose.

Peters continues that the federal government should be in the “marriage business” because it serves the public good. Defining marriage as between one man and one woman, he argues, is “key to protecting the best interests of children.”

Henry Potrykus from the Family Research Council and Matthew Bechstein from GOProud also weigh in on the issue. You can see their responses and more video clips taken by AFFer Bruce Majors on his blog.

Be part of the inaugural AFF Working Group with a unique, 2-part seminar that will be led by Rob Montz, a senior writer at Keybridge Communications who has been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, Detroit Free Press, and others.

This seminar is only open to AFF contributing members and above. You can join now for only $35 if you are not already a member. If you are not sure, please email me. There is a small $10 fee to attend the seminar which covers the cost of food, drinks, and materials.

The sessions will take place Thursday, March 8, 2012 and Monday, March 12, 2012 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the CEI conference room located at 1899 L Street NW, 12th Floor. Drinks and snacks will be provided.

You will be asked to write a 700 word op-ed by Monday 3/5 that will be edited by the instructor and returned at the workshop. The first session will cover op-ed writing techniques and use your op-eds to build your skills. The second session will cover how to pitch your piece and get published. The seminar will conclude with incentives for the first op-eds to actually be published!

The AFF Working Group is designed not only to train you, but also use your skills immediately. Don’t miss this opportunity for unique, hands-on training and application of your writing skills!

There is limited space available for this seminar, so your RSVP is required by Friday, March 2 to me at this email.

For more information, call (202) 331-2261 or email me. We look forward to your participation.

Palmer is vice president for international programs at the Atlas Network and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. This advice is an excerpt of the IHS “Creating Your Path to a Public Policy Career” guide, which you can read here.

Here’s a snippet of what I wrote:

A good constitution enshrines general principles rather than specific rights. It acts as a lens through which people of different opinions and status can live together peaceably regardless of changing norms and circumstances.

If you want a constitution that is lengthy and new, look no further than the Constitution of India, which was adopted in 1950. It takes 395 articles to explain all the ways in which India’s government will advance a just, equal, free, friendly, secular, socialist government.

It would have been more precise had I replaced that last “government” with “state,” but the point stands.

Getting these 150 or so words in that bastion of statism that is the Old Gray Lady wasn’t easy. I’ve had a few letters in the Wall Street Journal and a couple of the Chicago Tribune, but, before now, never one in the Times.

The secret is writing. A lot.

I model my letter-writing after Don Boudreaux at George Mason. He writes letters to the editor like no one’s business, posting all of them on his blog Cafe Hayek. What may surprise you about someone of Professor Boudreaux’s knowledge and status is that newspapers publish relatively few of his letters. But he continues writing and submitting them.

I don’t write as well or as much as Boudreaux, but I write every day. I write on blogs (check out Chicago Libertarian), Facebook, and Word. Sometimes I submit something I’ve written to a newspaper or a magazine, but most of the time I write for myself or people I know.

I practice writing every day. Sometimes I write something good. Regardless of whether someone publishes my writing or anyone likes it on Facebook, every time I write is an opportunity to get better.

Only about 10 percent of the letters I send to newspapers get published. Ten out of 100. That’s a lot of writing, but you really need to work at it if you want to make your voice heard.

Yesterday I got a pro-liberty message published in the New York Times. And you can, too.

Despite this success, Lee is far from where he saw himself in college. After graduating from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, Lee wanted to become a prosecutor in Chicago. He also confesses that he use to be a liberal.

So how did this liberal student who wanted to be a prosecutor in Chicago end up becoming one of the most famous conservative faces on YouTube? Well interesting story.

When things don’t go as planned.

Lee told Townhall in an interview for the December 2011 magazine, that he experienced a philosophical wake-up call when the liberal lobbying organization he was with made the Sunoco oil refinery in Toledo, Ohio their target.

I realized that most of the people who were there against me were not big CEOs or big corporate titans – they were everyday Americans who liked the fact that the refinery provided jobs and made life a little bit easier for a lot of them in terms of paying their bills… That was just kind of a shock to me when I actually met these people.

He dedicated a lot of time after this experience to understanding free-market principles, and to fleshing-out the new conservative philosophy to which he found he belonged.

Also, after law school and passing the bar, Lee found an unfriendly job market in the midst of the recession. That’s when Lee decided that he wasn’t going to wait for opportunity.

Instead of sitting around all day waiting for interviews, I decided to upload some videos to YouTube. And since YouTube had just announced that they were offering revenue sharing, I figured I could justify my time.

Lee started making videos and uploading them on his channel “How the World Works.” He began developing an audience and drawing attention. The liberal left on YouTube started making attack videos against Lee’s fledgling channel, as he was pretty much the only conservative channel on the block. These liberal channels had bigger audiences, which brought traffic to Lee.

Eventually, Fox News picked up his critique of Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff. To discuss the story, Fox News interviewed Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Lee again took the initiative, reaching out to Horner, and was offered a job at CEI. This brought him to Washington, DC, only a few short months after the launch of his channel in the summer of 2009.

It takes initiative, not expertise.

Lee Doren is entirely self-taught in video blogging.

I had no experience whatsoever in making videos. But as I started doing it over and over again, and started to see the entertainment channels, and see what their format was for what works on YouTube, I just started experimenting and found what worked.

The return on investment for Lee’s time has been enormous. “The amount of money I’ve spend on these videos basically zero over the years in terms of the money they have paid back through the advertising.” While Lee chooses to have a day job, he says that many people who have pursued make videos as a full-time job have been very successful. This is only the beginning for YouTube careers, he believes, as the internet is going to be replacing traditional television.

It’s getting to the point where [YouTube channels] have larger audiences than basic cable news. Much larger. And that’s why I always laugh at people who thumb their nose and say “Oh, you just make YouTube videos.” Because these people have smaller audiences on some cable channels.

People look down on YouTube videos, but their full-time job is to write something or make videos for something and they aren’t getting close to the viewership… Keith Olbermann supposedly had something like 50,000 views. That’s like a D-level YouTube video, and he is getting $12 million dollars or something like that?”

Eventually the paradigm is going to change in terms of where ad-buys are going to go. Television isn’t going to be able to sustain those kind of paychecks… Once they start merging television and the internet, that’ll basically make it where there is no difference.

How to develop an audience.

Lee says that a video blogger should focus on marketing a video first.

Forget about content for a second. You need to figure out where you are likely to be getting your audience from. Where is your traffic going to come from?… Because if you just go and decide to upload a random video, you are literally a needle in a haystack and someone has to be able to find your stuff. And that’s not easy. So you might have the greatest content in the world, and you might be able to make it really well, but you need a strategy of figuring out before you even upload your first video for how you will let people know.

Most videos on YouTube that go viral are planned to go viral… It literally is five to ten bloggers on big blogs with enormous audiences will post it on their blogs… Ten human beings decided to clip the URL and post it in a WordPress blog. It isn’t magic.

Having a marketing strategy is more important now than ever, because YouTube has grown exponentially since Lee started in 2009. He says that his success is partially attributable to the fact that he recognized the window of opportunity was “very, very short.”

Networking is a key part of marketing.

What is most important, according to Lee, is to make personal connections with other young professionals.

The best advice that I could give anyone, it has worked well, and I’d recommend it to anybody, is to find young people who you think are going to be successful in DC. They will give you the time of day, and they will listen to you, and they will be very willing to meet with you. They will be the people in the next five or ten years who will be offered positions to make decisions.

Lee Doren’s story is an inspiration because few of us find ourselves doing what we thought we would be doing in just the few short years after college or graduate school. While there is social pressure to feel bad about taking new directions, Lee’s story is a testament to the fact that these turns may lead to better places than our original plans.

Make sure to subscribe to Lee’s YouTube channel, “How The World Works,” check out his book, “Please Enroll Responsibly: Avoiding Indoctrination at College,” and follow Lee on twitter.

A final piece of advice from Lee.

Long-term planning is very difficult in new media… because you have no idea what the new media world is going to look like ten years from now. Ten years ago, YouTube didn’t exist.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Jacqueline Otto’s shelves at home are lined with used-book store finds; just a few of her favorite authors include C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.G. Wells, Orson Scott Card, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, and George Orwell.

She first read F.A. Hayek and Frédéric Bastiat at 16. Her political affiliation on Facebook is “Freedom,” and she hopes to always be known as a lover of liberty.

Jacqueline is on Twitter at @jacque_otto.

Learn more about Douglass and his life in this lecture by Robert McDonald, assistant professor of history at West Point, from a Cato Institute conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Becoming the next Tom Friedman or David Brooks is definitely an art form, but there’s also a science to writing an effective online political journalism op-ed, and we at PolicyMic  believe we’ve found the secret recipe for success.

Journalism has entered a new phase in the digital age; long gone are the muckracking days of Upton Sinclair and Jacob Riis, when straight investigative reporting sold papers. Today, understanding Google search trends, mastering TweetDeck, and becoming a social media expert (Facebook, Tumblr, Storify, etc.) is essential to maximize your views and help your story to go viral.

That’s why we have developed a Political Journalism bootcamp to give you the tools you’ll need to write powerful and persuasive political journalism in the new media environment. With challenges and competitions every week to keep it exciting, we’re trying to make news and politics fun and cool for our generation.

PolicyMic is a rapidly growing platform news & discussion platform for millennials. Think Twitter meets the Economist. I co-founded the site with Chris Altchek, a conservative who previously worked in the Bush White House, as a way to engage our generation in high-quality debate. The concept is simple: Users award one another Mics for thoughtful comments on articles. As you get more Mics from the community, you’re able to write more, unlock new features, and build a following. Once you’ve received enough Mics to level up to a “Pundit,” you can work with our editors and publish an op-ed on our homepage.

If you participate in the bootcamp, we’ll give you the opportunity to work with our editors to publish articles and make your writing technically sound, persuasive, and most of all, engaging to read. By the end of the 7-week course, you will have a body of polished work to add to your resume, as well as experience with a growing media platform. We’ll teach you hard journalism skills, including: writing a strong lead and thesis to grab your reader’s attention; mastering Google trends and analytics to generate compelling story topics and optimize your headlines for Google search; using social media effectively to promote your article via Facebook and Twitter.

Whether you’re looking to become a professional journalist, you want to work at a think-tank, or you’re ready to advance in the world of public policy, learning to write concisely and effectively is an essential skill. Indeed, because of the exposure they have received on PolicyMic with our over 200K readers, some of our contributors have already begun making a splash. After young conservative Matthew Swift wrote a piece entitled, “Newt Gingrich is Playing the Politics of Desperation,” he got picked up by Fox Business and had the opportunity to debate Juan Williams on national television. Libertarian pundit Robert Taylor wrote a piece calling for more free-market solutions to our education crisis, which got republished on Glenn Beck.com and The Blaze. Young Middle East scholar Anna Day won the opportunity to debate Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after receiving the most Mic’s on a debate on U.S. foreign policy.

We’re looking for more free-market thinkers to participate in our bootcamp, and believe this is an invaluable professional development opportunity. If you are interested, I highly encourage you to apply (Email me at jhorowitz (at) policymic.com). Looking forward to meeting all of you!

Jake Horowitz is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of PolicyMic. Follow him on Twitter @jacobdhorowitz

Understanding a topic and being able to organize your thoughts and express them coherently will put you head and shoulders above most people. If you can express them not only coherently, but in a way that is not painful to read, you will be on your way to success.

As a corollary, I recommend introducing yourself to the art of rhetoric. Learning how to approach audiences in a friendly way and how to arrange your evidence and arguments will help you enormously. As Aristotle noted in his Rhetoric:

“All people, up to a certain point, endeavor to criticize or uphold an argument, to defend themselves or to accuse. Now, the majority of people do this either at random or with a familiarity arising from habit. But since both these ways are possible, it is clear that matters can be reduced to a system, for it is possible to examine the reason why some attain their end by familiarity and others by chance; and such an examination all would at once admit to be the function of an art.”

That’s a fancy way of saying that some people are good at making arguments, defending themselves or criticizing others, and that we can study how they do it and learn to be better at it ourselves. Since you’re considering a career involved in making the world a more just, more free, and more prosperous place, you need to know how to persuade people not only that your views are correct, but that they should help you in your noble endeavor.

Two good places to start (I don’t recommend Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which is very theoretical) are George Orwell’s short essay, available online and in many books, “Politics and the English Language,” and Marcus Tullius Cicero’s “De Inventione.” (The latter is a lot easier to read than it sounds.) You will improve your ability to write, to speak, and to lead.

Palmer is vice president for international programs at the Atlas Network and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Read the full IHS “Creating Your Path to a Public Policy Career” guide here.

“Free the Future” will focus on career advice, along with guest commentary and occasional opinions on policy matters of interest to young professionals. Tom Palmer, Andrea McCarthy, Heather Lakemacher, Emily Miller, Rodney Vessels, and others will provide exclusive career advice, while Jacque Otto will offer Profiles in Liberty with interviews of thought and opinion leaders in our movement.

We also invite you to enjoy the improved features of americasfuture.org. A simpler menu of options on the left bar helps you find what you need quickly. Specific links for each chapter will keep you posted on activities and opportunities throughout the country. Doublethink magazine’s page is easier to use so you can find the latest essays on policy and culture at your fingertips. Last but not least, you can now become a member or make a gift with a simple, one-click process.

If you are interested in writing for “Free the Future” please contact Zach Graves. If you are interested in writing for Doublethink, please contact Noelle Daly. We look forward to your participation.