Disenchanted college students are the anchor of the Natural Law Party’s revolutionary politics, and they play a crucial role in challenging an “ideologically bankrupt” two-party system, the party’s presidential candidate said Monday at the Technological Institute.
John Hagelin, the party’s nominee, said college students comprise about a third of the Natural Law base because they have become increasingly disillusioned with the major parties’ stopgap problem-solving methods. Republicans and Democrats have become so “whitewashed” that they often do not address students’ concerns, he told 300 students in an American Government and Politics class.
“Young people have a fresh outlook,” Hagelin said in an interview after his speech. “They haven’t bought into the political status quo. Students want a lasting, forward-looking, sustainable solution. After all, they’re going to be around the longest.”
Eighty-nine percent of students did not vote in the 1998 election, Hagelin said, because major parties have consistently failed to address key issues. The candidate earned about 130,000 votes when he ran for president in 1996.
Hagelin also said he hopes to unite major independent political parties to oppose the Republican and Democratic candidates.
The party’s platform promotes harmonizing government with “natural law.” The party uses these principles to justify its support of abortion rights, a flat tax and preventative health care. Hagelin also said he he has placed campaign finance reform high on his agenda.
“(Political action committees) were created with the stroke of a pen, and they can be eliminated with the stroke of a pen,” he said during the speech. “What we need is a quiet revolution at the ballot box that sends a loud message to the politicians that says, ‘Wake up. Wake up.'”
But Hagelin’s research into the benefits of meditation raised some students’ eyebrows. The Natural Law platform, for instance, advocates using meditation as a method of bringing peace to the Middle East.
When students asked him about the role of meditation in his campaign, Hagelin said he would do anything to mediate world crises.
“If you can create a more fertile field and a more peaceful environment, you can create a field in which diplomatic efforts are guaranteed to succeed,” he said. “I know it’s a little out of the box, but if these ideas are not at least a step out of their time, what’s the point of creating a new political party?”
Hagelin’s remarks earned at least one student’s vote. Sadiya Farooqui, a Weinberg sophomore, called Hagelin a “breath of fresh air” and said his speech persuaded her to vote for him, even though she had not heard of him before last week.
Another student, however, said some of Hagelin’s answers demonstrated that he did not know what he was talking about.
When Kelly Langan, a Weinberg junior, asked the presidential candidate what should be done about failing inner-city schools, Hagelin emphasized the benefits of nutritional lunches and of altering teaching methods to maximize students’ brain capacities. He also said painting multi-colored murals would change schools’ traditional top-down teaching styles.
“I’d like to quote the fans at Saturday’s football game: Bullshit … bullshit,” Langan said.
