Ron Paul, Pizza, and Tent State

-A letter from the President
By Josh Hagewood
Spring 2008

We thought that talking about Ron Paul would be a good way to get people to meetings, but it turns out, pizza has more power than Paul. In trying to get people to our meetings this year, we’ve…well…we haven’t done much. And really, you could just chalk that up to our political ideology. We won’t do that though. We’d like to think that there’s more to it than that.

We took a poll asking Rutgers students if they knew what a libertarian was. Ten percent of the students said that they did, but said it awkwardly—the way that says, “Hey, I’m totally full of it,” or “dude, I really don’t feel like being bothered right now.”

Ok, so we lied. We didn’t take that poll, but we did take another one. At Tent State (the university of FREE), we asked a number of our peers to ban “dihydrogen monoxide”—a material that is of serious consequence to the environment. It’s in our oceans, we bathe in it, and yes—your children will someday drink it. The response was sensational. Students with a heart signed the petition without much encouragement. Others signed sheepishly, but did so without any questions asked. One student asked what it was. So we told him.

Dihydrogen monoxide contains two H’s and one O. Which is H2O. Which, for all you scholars out there, is water.

We won’t tell you how many signed, but the number was substantial. The only reason why we stopped is because we started feeling guilty. And it’s because they have real feelings too. Even though they didn’t think enough to ask what it was, or didn’t remember back to high school chemistry, we’re convinced that if we told them what they signed for, it would still hurt their feelings. Ok, so maybe it was a sad joke, but what we really dislike, is that most of the people there were joiners. They join because it’s cool. And well, when you don’t understand something (like libertarianism)—it’s not so cool.

While the articles within this publication will frame the libertarian ideology, I figured I’d give you my rendition of libertarianism (with no correlation to the water petition above)—government is like water; we need it, but if there’s too much of it, we’ll drown. In principle, libertarians believe in freedom politics, limited government, free markets, civil liberties, constitutionality, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Now for some shameless self-promotion—we are the Rutgers Libertarians, and welcome to our publication, The Invisible Hand.

Josh Hagewood is the President of the Rutgers Libertarians. He is a Livingston College Senior, majoring in History and Geography.