Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is starkly different from his major party rivals, and he wants you to know it.

“I like the notion of a libertarian president challenging Democrats at what they’re supposed to be good at,” Johnson said. “And then on the Republican side, how about challenging the Republicans?”

The former New Mexico governor has traditionally liberal goals, like ending the Drug War and military intervention immediately. He believes marriage equality is a constitutional right, and he is against legislation like the Patriot Act and last year’s harmful National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

But Johnson’s plans to cut the federal government by 43 percent, deliver a balanced budget to Congress in 2013 and replace the IRS with the federal consumption tax, known as the Fair Tax, also offer a strong fiscally conservative position to those dissatisfied with Republicans.

“Down the line, it’s a big difference from Democrats and Republicans,” Johnson said.

Johnson spoke to a slim crowd in the Union Theater on Friday as part of a monthlong tour of college campuses.

“I think young people, more than anyone else, understand how screwed we really are,” Johnson told the audience.

The event, called the Rally for Jobs, Diversity and Opportunity, was organized by the University’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty and also featured Lauren O’Halloran of Americans for Fair Taxation and Walter Block, Loyola New Orleans economics chair and professor.

O’Halloran opened with an introduction and explanation of the Fair Tax, and Block followed by introducing Johnson while also delivering a defense for libertarianism.

But it was obvious that Johnson was the star of the night.

Johnson referenced his popularity in New Mexico, job creation under his administration and his leading score among candidates on the ACLU civil liberties report card as some of the many attributes that separate him from President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

And these differences are what makes Johnson such an important candidate in national politics.

Because politics in the United States is mostly limited to Republicans and Democrats, the scope of discourse and debate is similarly limited.

For instance, both Romney and Obama are in agreement over bills such as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gave telecoms retroactive immunity for the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program, and the NDAA, which allows Americans to be indefinitely detained without trial or charge.

It’s unlikely you’ll hear much criticism of these bills — which many Americans believe are harmful to their civil liberties — because the underlying assumption from both candidates is that the acts are necessary and beneficial.

I experienced this lack of challenging opinions a day before the Johnson event at the LSU Votes Foreign Policy Election Forum in the Manship School of Mass Communication.

There, Political Science Professors Daniel Tirone, David Sobek and Harry Mokeba along with University alumna Alyson Neel, who mostly contributed her perspectives from Turkey, answered questions about the United States’ role internationally.

However, when questions turned to the drone wars conducted overseas, the consensus reached seemed to be that the policy is realistic and necessary to prevent attacks on our borders, despite the civilian casualties caused by drones.

Thankfully, Johnson’s opinion is much different.

“We bomb our targets, but we also bomb innocent people,” Johnson said. “And because we bomb and kill innocent people, we create enemies of whole countries.”

This does not necessarily mean you will agree with everything Johnson says, however.

Although Johnson finds “this continued, unsustainable debt and spending” to be a more important problem facing most Americans, his 43-percent cut to the federal government could adversely affect many who rely on government programs to get by.

The Fair Tax has similarly been criticized for being regressive, as low-income Americans are more likely to spend all their money each year than wealthy Americans — and would thus be taxed more.

O’Halloran argued that the tax policy would widen the tax base, and thus lower the burden on the middle class, calling the plan the “most researched piece of legislation” regarding tax policy in America.

But Johnson’s contribution to the wider national debate brings a new perspective that, even if you do not agree, is conducive to the problem-solving needed to move the country forward.