Ahmed: Look past party lines, consider Rep. Ron Paul

If you are a conservative, the minute you set foot on a college campus, you have committed a mortal sin. You have betrayed the liberal doctrine. If you are a conservative, the minute you set foot on a college campus, you have committed a mortal sin. You have betrayed the liberal doctrine.

How often do you read a right-leaning article in The Pitt News? Exactly. You’re more likely to read a passionate plea for the government to bail out student debt. Well, that is about to change.

There is a long-standing tradition of liberal tilts on college campuses. A 2007 Harvard University working paper by sociologist Neil Gross is the most recent study that tabulates what has been known for decades. A majority of college professors tend to be left-leaning, at a proportion not representative of the general public. Also, the highly cited annual freshman survey administered by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA indicates a majority of freshmen have liberal positions. This certainly sets a tone in the classroom.

Normally, I couldn’t care less about liberal versus conservative. Categorizing social and political views by two general definitions and two general political parties is encumbering. Each party promotes a groupthink of its own, and an unfortunate consequence is that people stop thinking for themselves. They come to standstills because of one party issue or another.

The liberal spirit that pervades college campuses causes such groupthink. And in trying to stay in line with the party philosophy, people allow some important issues to slide by — like fiscal policy. If I were to cite my conservative views here and now, I am sure they wouldn’t go unnoticed. There would be arguments and counterarguments, all in hope of persuading me to fit in.

With the GOP primaries still in full swing and the bid for the presidency developing, this has become a timely issue. A lack of a theme is evident among Republicans on campus. Well, who can blame them? There is no clear-cut front-runner right now, and each candidate seems to be out of touch or plain zany. Except for one.

That would be Rep. Ron Paul. The media-blackout man. The money-bomb man. If there is any candidate in either party that can actually resuscitate America, it is this 76-year-old physician.

I do not believe I am alone when I say I am normally apprehensive about admitting my support for Paul. The way the mainstream media paints the Republican presidential race makes it almost common knowledge that this man will not win. Moreover, on a typical liberal college campus, it would seem to be even more unwise to state such support.

Well, it’s time to come out of the voting closet. If you truly support Paul, feel free to express it. Feel free to admit it. Do not sacrifice ideology for practicality. Not here. Even if Paul doesn’t win enough delegates, I would still support him as an independent.

I have my reasons for believing in him. Foremost, I actually have faith in this candidate. I trust what he says is true and that what he promises will be fulfilled if he were to be elected. I make no compromise in supporting him. His two most sensible stances are those on fiscal policy and foreign policy, and these alone make him the best candidate. These are our nation’s greatest concerns right now.

Funds for government spending for bailouts and health care come from somewhere. That somewhere would be the American taxpayers. If our government decides to bail out another country through the International Monetary Fund, you and I and others pay. Our national debt should tell you we have no business trying to be everyone’s savior.

I am concerned as much as the next person for our nation’s security. However, national defense is not the same as militarism. Notice how our government was in support of NATO’s intervention in Libya. One might argue this was a humanitarian effort. If that is the case, I can name many other countries that would need such help, but perhaps they do not possess what constitutes “America’s interests.” Remember the Rwandan Genocide? Let’s get real. We need to stop policing the world. For one, it’s not our job. As well, it might create more negativity toward the U.S. than if we were to choose not to intervene.

Being non-interventionist doesn’t make a country isolationist. Is intervening in other peoples’ governments the only way we want to interact with them?

As it stands, no other GOP candidate holds these views. Instead, the Republican alternatives to Paul promise more of the same. It seems their underlying mantra is that Iran is next. Also, no other GOP candidate has any plans equivalent to Paul’s on reinventing our country’s monetary system.

Political sense would say Paul is running as a Republican because he knows running outside of a party is nearly futile. After all, you have to sell a product under a brand name. Unfortunately, then, people might dismiss Paul because of assumptions about how conservative his views are. And this is more often the case on college campuses.

What I urge students to do is to listen to the candidates. What are they actually saying? Do they have a record to back up all the values they purport to possess? Do a little extra work. You cannot expect the mainstream media to do it for you. We have already witnessed their bias.

Again, the party system is a failure. The Founders tried to warn us. George Washington himself said, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge — natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities — is itself a frightful despotism.”

It would be ideal if there were no parties and candidates ran on their own platforms. Then real discussions could be had, and intellectual development could be attained. This country’s founders and political philosophers were not of a different species. We too can create real solutions to our problems, as long as we let go of left versus right and think for ourselves.

I don’t ask that you support Paul. But if you do, do not let yourself be browbeaten into doing otherwise. Simply, be wary of what you hear and what gets repeated so many times. This “common knowledge” is often not the whole picture. Seek out the truth for yourself the old-fashioned way.

Write Abdul at aba24@pitt.edu.