In the wake of the recent elections, I find myself elated but mostly relieved that a sufficient number of Americans were reasonable enough to vote a Democratic majority into Congress.  As positive a development as this is in our current situation, it immediately makes me realize how low my political hopes have sunk after nearly six years of the neocon freakshow.  In the time before Dubya, I actually used my position producing a politics-oriented website for MTV to attempt to advance the cause of a third-party candidate, one who was not only not a career politician, but was in fact a brilliant physicist and experienced meditator.  Imagine it… a spiritually enlightened scientist and educator in the White House.  What follows is the piece I ran on MTV’s chooseorlose.com back in Summer of 2000 after interviewing Dr. John Hagelin, then presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party…

Dr. John Samuel Hagelin is not your typical candidate for President. In fact, he could hardly be further from your average career politician if he were a professional wrestler. John Hagelin is a quantum physicist, and is considered among the world’s foremost experts in an area called “Unified Field Theory,” an effort to scientifically uncover the single underlying organizing power and creativity of nature itself, from which springs all of physical reality. He runs the physics department of a university in Iowa which is named for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, heads the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, runs a brain research center and recently went to Washington D.C. to found an international university dedicated to world peace. With all that on his mind, why on earth would he be interested in the dirty business of politics and running for president? ChooseorLose.com sat down with him over lunch to find out.

According to Hagelin: “The Natural Law Party was founded by 12 or 18 people initially, back in 1992, at a time of great frustration. Many had doubts about Clinton, and George Bush Sr. had just done the Savings and Loan de-regulation, which was a terrible instance of special-interest government that has cost us all billions of dollars. There were a lot of people who just felt that the most powerful, best-funded political parties in the most creative country on earth should be able to come forward with some new ideas and some new messages, so we thought it was time for a third party. All the major innovations — the right of women to vote, abolition of slavery, child labor laws, workman’s compensation — these ideas all came from third party movements.”

The 46 year old Hagelin is a soft-spoken man who seems to radiate a calm confidence that probably comes as much from a regular practice of meditation as it does from often being the smartest guy in the room. Despite his rarified Ivory Tower background (Harvard PhD.), he engaged us in casual conversation. When we asked him to describe the philosophy behind the Natural Law Party, he had this to say:

“What’s nice about the Natural Law Party, is that there is a philosophy to it. There is a foundational principle that guides all of its platforms and policies, a principle which you could call “sustainable solutions in harmony with natural law” — harnessing the intelligence of nature, the laws of nature, to solve acute social problems, whether they are in health, crime prevention, education, energy, environmental issues, agriculture, etc.”

That may sound all well and good, but how does it translate in the real world? Here are some ways Hagelin addressed specific issues:

On Education:

“Education figures so basically in my platform. I don’t want the Federal Government to be a Big Brother dictating local educational policy — it’s not necessary to have that — but the government can showcase what’s working, and let the students, teachers and parents pick and choose from among these successful programs those which they think would make sense in their own neighborhoods/communities. It is increasingly important as our population stretches the limits of the ecosystem, with our biotechnologies, with the information revolution, that we harness more of the innate potential and wisdom of the human mind and human heart. Education right now is not doing a particularly good job at unfolding human potential, the full potential of the mind. In fact it’s probably doing worse than ever. Less than half of our graduates from High School are reaching even adolescent levels of emotional, intellectual and psychological growth. So I have spent much of my life scouring the country for what is really working in public and private school settings, to keep kids in school, to really spark their interest and creativity, to develop broader comprehension. Also, education should convey that we have a shared humanity, and today actually, science points to the foundational fact of life that you and I are one, at our basis. That’s the whole fulfillment of Einstein’s dream. Unified Field theories — what do they say? They say if you scratch deeply enough beneath the surface we all arrive ultimately at the same underlying unified universal field. We are that. So ultimately you and I are one — there’s really only one consciousness at this table. That is a scientific fact. And if education fails to communicate that, profoundly, if people continue to behave towards others as though they were other than oneself, then we’ll see a perpetuation of the sort of narrow-mindedness, bigotry and prejudices that have been with us in past generations. If you look at what is taught in the schools, it is 100 years out of date. The ideas of conflict and separateness, are all rooted upon a whole world-view that has long since been disproven. So one of the things we need to do — and we can do this without treading on issues of Church and State, even if we use science as the justification — we should be able to communicate to our youth the essential unity of humanity. What’s good for me is good for you, and what’s good for you is good for me. That, really, just from a scientific standpoint, is the deepest law. That is the natural law from which I can derive — if you give me a big enough piece of paper — all of Physics, all of Chemistry, all of Mathematics. It all stems from the principle of underlying unity.”

On Gun Control:

“We need to plug the loopholes that are allowing guns to flow easily into the hands of young people, and into the hands of known offenders. So, background checks at gun shows, child-safety locks — absolutely no reason not to have. Some of the common-sense gun-control measures that are being resisted right now by the NRA and by the Republican congress, I would strongly support. But, beyond that, the fact that we need to police ourselves against ourselves is, to some extent, a failure of education — or the fact that we need to have police in every classroom and in every business — we’ve already failed. Education is failing to communicate the foundational truth of life. So ultimately, I would go back to education as the source of many of our national problems, and ultimately the solution to them. Sorry, didn’t mean to get off the subject.”

On Crime Prevention / Criminal Justice:

“I think get-tough police policy and sentencing has been a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that crime has been so high. It came in fairly heavy with the Republican revolution in ‘94. It’s a backlash reaction against what has been an historically high crime rate. Not in the last couple of years, but in the last decade. And expanding the death penalty to a much wider range of crimes is a knee-jerk reaction. The public cries out for getting tough, which fuels people like Rudy Giuliani and the Congress. I think people are going to call for a more balanced approach, and a more tolerant approach, particularly under my administration, when the incidence of crime and violence will go way down, based upon effective prevention and effective prison rehabilitation. Here’s something that’s really avant-garde but very effective… In maximum security prisons, in a ten-year Harvard study that I had some participation in, thirty thousand maximum security violent felons were instructed in meditation — in places like San Quentin, Folsom Prison, Walpole Prison. The bottom line was, they didn’t go back to jail. Recidivism dropped dramatically. Why? Because prisons are pressure cookers of stress, and by teaching meditation you are equipping prison inmates with the coping techniques to deal with acute prison stress, and perhaps more importantly, the unique challenges of re-integrating successfully into society. So, one way to cut crime is to target people who are at statistically highest risk of committing future crimes — the current inmate population –and re-introduce rehabilitation, a word not used anymore. It’s called warehousing.  It’s called incarceration.  But the Congress basically cut all funds in the states for what you would call rehabilitation or educational programs. That’s penny wise and pound foolish. If a program as simple and cost-effective as meditation or transcendental meditation in the prisons can cut prison recidivism by 90% it should be supported. But anyway, there are a lot of effective crime-prevention programs that can cut the rate of crime and the cost of crime, and I think the populist cry which brought the Republicans into power in 1994, this sort of “get tough” knee jerk response, which is already losing its popularity in New York, will lose its popularity in the rest of the country. People will be calling for more compassionate and also cost-effective common-sense prevention.”

On Technology:

“Technology, literally, is the application of natural laws, which can be for life-affirming purposes or life-damaging purposes. The internet is a very powerful tool, and communication, I think, is a natural evolutionary step in the growth of civilization. The impact of that technology, I’m sure, is going to be positive, net positive, as people gain in the ability to know more, to accomplish more. But for example, biotechnology really is in violation of natural laws, because it completely breaks down the barriers against gene pollution put in place by nature. You can take genes from insects, viruses, fish, humans and bring them into our food crops — that could never happen in nature, even though proponents of biotechnology will try to tell you that it’s a natural extension of normal breeding practices. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough to know that you can coax a big pig to mate with a little pig, but you can never get a fish to mate with a tomato.”

On Nuclear Power:

“I happen to be a nuclear physicist against nuclear power, because nuclear power generation violates certain of nature’s deepest laws. It is creating a whole new generation of toxins that are so deadly they have to be kept under constant guard for 20,000 years, or they leak into the aquifer, they leak into the ocean. And I’m an optimist I think — a patriot — but I can’t guarantee that the U.S. National Guard is going to be there in 20,000 years to safeguard these deadly toxins. I’m very much against nuclear proliferation and for reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. 185 nations including the five major nuclear powers have just signed an agreement to unequivocally eliminate all nuclear weapons, a remarkable breakthrough frankly, and I’ve issued a press-release — which was only on page nine of the New York Times so you may not have seen it — lauding this agreement, but it is going to get killed by [Senator] Jesse Helms. It’s going to get killed in the U.S. House and Senate, unless we do something about it.”

On Foreign Policy:

“Our so-called foreign aid remains, despite eight years of Clinton/Gore administration, military aid. It is all coupons that are redeemed to US arms manufacturers for weapons. It is an inside-the-beltway subsidy of the arms-manufacturing industry and, as a result of that, we’ve become known as the country that’ll provide a rifle to every man woman or child who can lift one. For decades, we’ve armed both sides of virtually every conflict on earth, and we’re sowing the seeds of enmity throughout the world, such that we’ve become the principle target of terrorism on earth — not because we stand for freedom, but because our government continues to do hateful things in the name of the American people. So if we want to bolster our national security, for example, don’t spend a trillion dollars on Star Wars, which if fully implemented, at best, would protect us from a missile attack by North Korea. North Korea wouldn’t use such a high-cost, high-tech, traceable delivery system as an ICBM anyway, when they could simply float a missile up the Potomac. So something like Star Wars only provides a false sense of security. Instead, let’s stop creating enemies throughout the world, by shifting our foreign aid away from military aid, towards the export of US know-how, in areas like education, sustainable agriculture, environmental technologies, business and entrepreneurism, to allow more countries to stand on their own feet economically and with respect to food, and contribute to a more prosperous and harmonious family of nations.”

On Health Care:

“What would health policy in harmony with natural law mean? Well, it would mean taking advantage of the laws of nature that uphold health, through preventative medicine and even natural medicines that strengthen the immune system against disease. Right now, we have a health crisis in America in many respects. We have the most expensive “disease-care” system on Earth, by far, but among the poorest health of any developed country. It’s because we are the only developed country without a health-care system.  It’s purely a disease-care system. Congress, despite its own statistics finding that 70% of disease and 700 billion dollars in annual medical expenses are preventable through simple pre-natal care, preventative medicine and proven natural medicines, has actually outlawed prevention.  Prevention has been banned from Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system. That’s why we have the most expensive disease care system on earth and among the poorest health. I have already promoted legislation in the congress that would extend coverage to proven preventative medicine, that prevents disease and saves money. It transcends the surface bickering over who will pay for who’s disease, and it identifies the deeper source of America’s health crisis which is, simply, poor health. It is a win-win solution. Liberals like Senator Tom Harken support my language because it improves the quality of life and health for the country. Fiscal conservatives like Newt Gingrich, when he was in Washington, supported my language because it saves money. It would allow us, for example, to extend coverage to approximately 43 million Americans that don’t have it right now, at a net savings to the nation… because we’re not playing the zero-sum game. We are challenging the hidden assumption that we have to have the worst health on earth. We don’t have to have the worst health on earth, and we tackle the issue at its source.”

On Abortion:

“I have to defend a woman’s right to choose, vigorously, because this is a very complex moral issue — there are the rights of the mother, the rights of the fetus — but the American people, obviously, have not decided how they stand. In fact, I’d say the American people are deeply divided over this issue. And if the American people haven’t decided, what moral authority or constitutional authority does the Federal Government have to impose their morality on the American people, usurping a woman’s right to choose? So my stand on abortion is that it really doesn’t matter where Pat Buchanan or George W. or John Hagelin stand on that issue — I don’t have the moral authority to take away a woman’s right to choose. It’s not the federal government’s choice. The thing about an unwanted pregnancy is… it’s unwanted. That means that at some point it was a mistake. And if it represents a mistake, then people can be educated to make fewer mistakes. And not just with sex education, but education that creates a more forward-looking, far-sighted style of behavior, so people get in less trouble. Also there are alternatives to abortion, which I would showcase as president. Adoption would be an excellent alternative to abortion. I have an Aunt Virginia living in Louisiana who has spent much of her life campaigning against abortion, which she thinks is murder. And I would hesitate to have a federal government force her to finance abortions with tax money. I would rather help set up a private charitable fund, using Norman Lear and a lot of other people I know in this area who are vehemently pro-choice, to help fund family planning and abortion clinics, so that the federal government doesn’t have to. So I have what you could almost call a libertarian philosophy when it comes to abortion. The government shouldn’t be in the business of abortion, neither paying for them with federal tax money, nor legislating them away.”

On Campaign Finance Reform:

“Eliminate PACs [political action committees] and soft money, PACs being the far more corrupting of the two. Where soft money goes to a party, PAC contributions are direct bribes to congressmen. Plus, they’re bigger than soft money. PACs used to be called bribes years ago, then they were legalized during the Watergate era. Even McCain wouldn’t talk about PACs because he won’t bite the hand that feeds him. True reform will never come from a Republican or Democrat. That’s one reason I think Americans are turning, and should turn, to a third party alternative in this election year. But also there should be some public funding of campaigns to provide airtime, for example, for the qualified candidates and legally established parties that have met the burden of ballot-access. And that sort of public funding of campaigns if fully implemented, would cost the average taxpayer ten dollars. By comparison, what did it cost each of us, for example, to bail out the failed S&L industry? And every B2 bomber (which the Pentagon doesn’t even want) they’re two billion dollars apiece. So how much does a single B2 bomber cost the average taxpayer? Probably eight or ten dollars, just for one bomber. If you trace the votes of Congress, if you read a book like “The Buying of Congress” published by the Center for Public Integrity (which you can buy online at publicintegrity.org) you can see what it costs us NOT to publicly fund our campaigns.”

On China Policy:

“They’re committing human rights violations, cracking down on their own religious freedoms and freedoms of speech, but what is governing our policy towards China right now, is how we can maximize the amount of Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Pharmaceuticals we sell there. We’ll pay lip-service to human rights, but when it comes to actually deciding on trade policy, whether to grant China permanent normal trade-relations, it all boils down to a few corporate sponsors. I find that unnatural.”

On Agriculture:

“There are laws that govern the natural fertility of the soil, that bring forth abundant crops naturally, sustainably. Agricultural policy should harness those laws without sterilizing the soil with intensive chemical inputs, pesticides and fertilizers. It is possible to farm sustainably, even organically, and equal or exceed the yield of the chemical-intensive farming practices, certainly over time.”