Daily Lobo

U. New Mexico

The presidential election is perhaps the best platform right now for such a methodological examination. Consider that the two major candidates are only marginally different. Both are enormous corporate whores who would sooner sprout wings and fly than halt the big-money handjobs. Both believe that cannabis should remain illegal and its use merits time in prison. They are not going to raise the minimum wage to a fair level or maintain a foreign trade policy that insists upon basic human rights for people such as a 6-year-old Burmese who made the Old Navy tech vests that are now stuffed in the back of your closets.

Neither is going to actually make any progress in the areas of gay, female or minority rights. And both are going to build more prisons instead of rehabilitation centers, more B-12s than public schools, more wealth for the wealthy than equality for the poor.

Then there are the third-party candidates, whose ideas and political platforms are supposedly so radical that they can only hope to muster one or two percent of the popular vote.

Case in point: Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party candidate for president. Browne wants to eliminate Social Security, perhaps the most inane and burdensome program ever created by our government. More importantly, he wants to end prohibition and the failed and unconstitutional War On Drugs. Browne said on his first day in office he would grant executive pardons to every person currently in prison for a non-violent federal drug offense.

Essentially, Browne wants to drastically reduce the size of government to reflect the outline of the Constitution, which sounds perfectly logical to me.

A better case in point: Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate for president. The center of Nader's whole campaign is riding on the American politics of corporate influence. Nader is fully prepared to stop money-driven policy making.

Poll after poll shows that the American people favor campaign finance reform, that they think corporations have too much influence over politicians and that they don't trust politicians. Well, here's Ralph, the man who created consumer advocacy, the man who doesn't own a car out of moral protest, the man who eats at the same restaurant five days a week because he gets the sixth meal free. Tell me this guy's not the candidate you've been looking for!

A couple weeks ago, an alarming personal revelation happened to me at the laundromat. As I was waiting for my clothes to dry, among all of the other poor people for whom George W. Bush has so much compassion, I realized that, based on my personal philosophy, I've been relegated to the fringe. I'm an absolute radical because of the labels that could be attached to me: vegan, feminist, humanist.

I refuse to eat animals. There are several reasons not to, and the only reason anybody can offer in favor of eating animals is that they taste good. So does a bagel, but a bagel doesn't leave the aftertaste of animal cruelty, environmental ruin or economic injustice like a nice bloody steak.

I don't believe in adhering to traditional gender roles. If a male wants to wear a skirt, society shouldn't teach that he can't. If a woman wants to hock a loogie, society shouldn't teach that she can't. Regardless of anatomy, human beings are individuals, and generalizations, limitations or expectations shouldn't be applied based on arbitrary notions.

I detest that I can't find a fashionable, affordable pair of shoes that wasn't made in a sweatshop or with animal parts. I try desperately to only buy products manufactured in countries with human-rights laws protecting workers. Look at your tags; know that you're wearing some 9-year-old's 12-cents-an-hour labor. It doesn't make you sexy.

These personal philosophies alone are enough to brand me a radical in our society. We won't even mention my atheism, which practically buys me a ticket to the moon. But ask yourself what kind of society you live in when someone guided by a desire to not hurt others, or support the hurting of others, is the exception and not the rule.