When partaking in political discourse, two sides are generally taken: conservative and liberal. However, these two sides are hardly the only representatives of political ideologies. There is one side that seems to be too often forgotten — the libertarians.

We libertarians consider ourselves part of the vast, diabolical conspiracy to take over control of the government — and then leave you alone!

How are we different? Well, we’re definitely not those war-hawks in the Republican party that want to continue policing the world at taxpayer expense. We’re also not the type that wants to control your personal (and sexual) lives.

On the other side, we’re certainly not fond of high taxes for anyone. Just the same, we don’t care too much for government intervention in the economy at all. You could say that we’re the capitalist pigs your professor keeps mumbling about.

But why focus on what we aren’t when we can tell you what we are? First of all, we advocate a principle called self-ownership. Essentially, this means you own your own body and can do what you want with it.

To quote our favorite libertarian TV personality, Ron Swanson (Parks and Recreation), “If you want to eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds, and die of a heart attack at 43, you can! You are free to do so!” Libertarians believe that everyone should be able to live their lives in their own ways; hard to argue with that right?

This is relevant in the current marriage debate. In regards to non-heterosexual marriage, our general stance is, “Who cares?!” The state should not have the authority to dictate what occurs between two (or more) consenting adults. Some of us may not play for that team, but we can still root for it. Besides, Kim Kardashian has done much more to ruin the sanctity of marriage than any other couple.

We also endorse something called the non-aggression principle. In this context, we define aggression as initiating or threatening violence against a person or legitimately owned property of another. In other words, you can’t come at me, bro.

You could call us the hippies that want world peace, or you could call us the patriots that dare to say no to war. If you grabbed a bunch of college students from around the world and threw them into a room together, we would probably start dancing to techno-pop or something. The government persuades us to hate each other based on religion, ethnicity, or social class and asks us to die in battle for them. No thanks; we’d rather dance.

If you’re into this sort of thing, a group of us started an organization on campus. We’ll be giving a more in-depth (and more entertaining) look into the libertarian philosophy at our first meeting at 9 p.m. March 22 in 225 Olscamp Hall.

Of course, no meeting is complete without free pizza! Even if you hate us, come tell us why, and we promise to still share the pizza. We’re non-aggressive like that.

Whether you’re a scholar familiar with the works of Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek, or this just sounds like a good time and you’d like to learn more, we would love to meet you. We can learn from you and you can learn from us. It’s like voluntary exchange.

Respond to the BGSU Young Americans for Liberty at

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