Linnie Leavines

I submitted this article to The Daily Reveille’s opinion section nearly a week ago. I never heard back from them, so I thought I’d published it here, at least.

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 This letter is a response to Reveille columnist Chris Seemann’s piece: “Ron Paul may be charismatic, but doesn’t understand science.”

Seemann wrote in his article that though he wants support Ron Paul, he can’t bring himself to do it because of Paul’s stance on evolution.

Seemann has since mellowed his approach in a follow-up blog post, “ Seemann listens: Ron Paul and science,” by writing that Paul’s opinion on evolution was merely the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” rather than the sole factor that caused him to reject Paul as a viable candidate.

This clarification grants Seemann more credibility, but he still misses the main point: he fails to recognize that Ron Paul’s view on evolution is entirely irrelevant to his bid for the Presidency.

I can understand the mistake. It seems almost natural, in today’s political climate, to think that such a personal issue should be relevant; our government, particularly at the federal level, is thoroughly involved in every aspect of our personal lives, after all. In respect to the controversy over evolution, it is especially troubling that the control over our public education system is so centralized.

Considering this, it is no surprise that our representatives’ personal biases, which in an earlier era may have been irrelevant, now infect public policy, and often to our detriment.

The solution to this problem is not to bicker over which politicians best suit our respective religious affiliations, or other highly personal preferences. We must instead reduce the scope of influence our government currently exercises over our lives, so that these personal inclinations hold no sway at the federal level.

 This is the sort of government Paul envisions, one that promotes maximum personal freedoms, one so unobtrusive that the religious preferences of those in power are rendered irrelevant. In accordance with Paul’s ideal, our leaders are simply our policymakers, not our priests.

Nor are they our scientists, as Seemann implied in his follow-up post. A President properly restrained by the laws of our Constitution should never be responsible for “understanding and implementing science correctly” through policy, and that is the sort of President Ron Paul aspires to become.

Paul’s religious beliefs are not sustained at the expense of the scientific community, or at the expense of different perspectives. Nor are his religious convictions part and parcel with a heavy-handed public policy that is guided by ideology over constitutional law.

Rather, his track record as an advocate for limited government proves his policy decisions will be tempered with utter abstention, rendering the topic of evolution in context of his bid for the Presidency a distracting non-issue.