I know that this letter will stick in the craw of many of those who are part of the cult of Ron Paul, but Ron Paul’s ideas don’t work — never have and never will.  Firstly, Ron Paul is running as a Republican and not a libertarian.  He likes to couch his rhetoric with libertarian talking points, but let’s be honest, if — and this is huge IF — Ron Paul were to ever win the presidency as a Republican, you can bet his administration would find, just as the Obama administration has found, that change in the U.S. system of government doesn’t come in sweeping movements, and that individual actors,  even the U.S. President, despite a strong desire, are not capable of creating rapid change.
We have a system that is designed to mute rapid change. Until those systemic issues are addressed there will be no quick fixes; no sweeping change. But here is the kicker, Ron Paul is a Republican and the Republican Party doesn’t want to bring down the system.  The system works quite well for what the modern Republican Party stands for: economic inequality and the ability to buy support via special interest groups such as the NRA or Tea Party and the use of the state to force conservative social agenda on all of the people of the USA.
However, let’s return to the topic of Dr. Paul. I have noticed that many of the Paulites often speak in slogans.  This is just how the communists spoke prior to their 1917 revolution.  Dr. Ron Paul is in many ways like Vladimir Lennon in 1910.  He has what sounds like great ideas on the surface, but lacks the ability to do anything more than talk about what is wrong with the current system.  He cannot point to one example of a working libertarian system of government.  Nor can he point to any system that partially uses libertarian economic theory.  That is scary, folks, and it is puzzling why so many seem drawn to his ideas like moths to a flame.    
Libertarianism, like communism, works well in the lab but once it is put to the test of the real world it falls apart, and what is left — what actually becomes the functioning libertarian government — is one that gives no recourse to those being exploited or treated unjustly.  I know it is easy for an 18 to 25 year old to think that they never will need government. This invincibility mindset is why the Army likes to recruit 18-year-old males.  
Outside of being physically capable, 18 to 25 year olds will take more risks and act in ways that others who are older and perhaps a bit wiser would not.  To me this is why so many college age kids support Ron Paul.  They have never, by and large, had to deal with a company dumping pollutant in their back yards.  They have never, by and large, had to deal with a for-profit healthcare system that is seeking to boost their profits by cutting services and penalizing use.  They have never, by and large, had to face an employer who desired their employees to work in unsafe conditions, and they have never been in a place where they had no choice but to accept those conditions due to financial obligations.  In other words, it is easy to be a libertarian when you have not had deal with life, just like it is easy to be a libertarian when you are independently wealthy.   
Our political process is not perfect, but until we stop demanding from it what it cannot produce, we will not be able to focus on what is possible, and we will always be upset at what we have.  Libertarianism doesn’t work.  If you think it does open your U.S. History books back to the 1890s and read why they called it the gilded age. Also pick up a copy of “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.  Do we really want to go back to a day when 8-year-old children were forced to work 15 hour days out of economic necessity? Do we want to go back to a system that allowed free enterprise a free hand in doing what it wants with only the strongest public outrage serving as check to their schemes?  
I know many here in Louisiana grew up learning politics from very conservative parents and thus have  from a very early age self-identified with conservative politics.  I know this is why many feel naturally compelled to embrace Ron Paul — he is a conservative; he is safe.  All I ask is for you to tune out the slogans, the rhetoric and do something that you should be doing now, at the University, and think for yourself.
Just because you believe that pot should be legalized or LGBT folks should be free to marry whom they want, doesn’t mean that you have to get on board with a guy who ultimately supports kids in the coal pits, polluters’ right to pollute and CEOs who act like the robber barons of old.  
 
John Hansen, 2008 LSU graduate
 
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