'With liberty and constitutionality for all'

No government is good government -- at least, if you ask Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hager.\nA lone wolf struggling to escape the partisan politics surrounding this year's election, Hager has focused his campaign on traditional Libertarian values.\n"I see the major threat to liberty coming from the federal government, which is out of control and operating outside the Constitution," Hager said. "Federal bureaucrats operate as agents of special interests and promote junk science into policy which infringes on individual and property rights and cripples science and technology in the bargain."\nHager's solution is to attack the problem from the top.\n"In running for Senate," he said, "I'm just going after the largest evil around."\nHager, an IU alumnus and Bloomington-based computer software engineer, labels himself socially liberal and fiscally conservative. His main goals include phasing out entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare and the protection of Constitutional rights. More specifically, Hager said he believes strongly in the right of self-defense and a blanket protection of Second Amendment rights.\n"I'm a rational pragmatist who has found that the Constitution as written would work very well if we followed it," Hager said.\nOne facet of particular interest to younger voters has been Hager's stance on drug prohibition. In 1990, he co-founded the Hoosier Cannabis Re-legalization Coalition, an organization devoted to ending cannabis prohibition. Hager said he views the entire war on drugs as "racist."\n"Even if the drug war is winnable, which I doubt, victory can only come at the expense of freedom," Hager said. "The most likely outcome is that we won't win and will live in a police state."\nSenior Brian Biancardi said he agrees with many of Hager's positions on major issues.\n"He has good ideals and knows what the Libertarian party is all about," said Biancardi, former president of the IU College Libertarians.\nBut Biancardi finds fault with Hagers stance on the environment.\n"He has no environmental policy," Biancardi said. "He believes (change) can be done through legal precedents and general laws established by the courts, but every environmentalist knows that it won't work that way."\nBiancardi said he believes Hager's environmental focus should be shifted toward setting regulations on private industry and organizations.\nIn what many have called his most controversial action in this election, Hager recently penned a position piece arguing why his opponent, incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), did not deserve a Nobel Prize for his peace-keeping efforts. Lugar, a Republican, was nominated for the prize along with former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) for their bipartisan efforts to disarm nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. The pair lost last month to Kim Dae-jung, the president of South Korea, but the nomination alone created additional support for Lugar's already powerful campaign.\nIn the attack, which is published on his Web site, Hager accused Lugar of "engaging in geopolitical games that increase the risk of nuclear war or nuclear terror." \nMany Libertarians said they agree.\n"I think that unfortunately Lugar has been supportive of a foreign policy of foreign intervention, and of being the world's policeman," said graduate student Erin Hollinden, chair of the Monroe County Libertarian party and president of the IU College Libertarians.\nHollinden said Lugar's decision to involve U.S. troops in Kosovo and Iraq was not in the best interest of the country.\n"He's not someone who's promoting world peace in any way," she said.\nHollinden said she supports Hager's suggestion that America, among other things, should stop trying to manage the world by force. And even though he's not the most popular candidate, she said she believes Hager's presence in this election bodes well for the future of the third-party Libertarian candidate.\n"It's really important to frame the debate and use the context of constitutionality that Libertarians always lend to it," Hollinden said. "I think the Libertarian party is well positioned to grow into being a major party."\nLikewise, Hager said he knows he cannot win the election, but he will be weighing his political accomplishments this year on a more long-term scale.\n"Success depends on how you measure it," Hager said. "Since no one is going to beat Lugar, I measure it by the extent to which Libertarian ideas I've expressed enter the political debate, the number of people I bring into the Libertarian party, and whether or not I crack the two percent threshold on election day."\nFor more information about U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hager, visit www.paulhager.org.