"The United States is at war," said Micahel Badnarik, the 2004 Libertarian presidential candidate. Badnarik spoke Thursday in the Student Union Jordan Ballroom. "I'm not talking about the war in Iraq," he continued. "We are engaged in a... war of ideas. We are in a war between individualism and collectivism."Badnarik, a self-declared expert on the Constitution, lectured to a group of around 100 supporters and students about the abuses of the Constitution throughout American history up to and including the present.One of the major themes of his lecture was a comparison of the United States with its current form and institutions to the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. According to Badnarik, the United States is not a truly capitalist nation. "The United States is .. supposed to be the antithesis of communism," Badnarik said. "The first item in the Communist Manifesto is the abolition of private property. Our Founding Fathers said that private property was as sacred as the word of God and the communists think we're going to abolish private property."Badnarik cited the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain and compared it with the first plank of the Communist Manifesto. "The purpose of the Constitution and the government it creates is to protect you private property," Badnarik said.Badnarik said his taxes, when he lived in California, totaled 48 percent. "When do you get to say 'alright, that's too much'?" he asked. "The founding fathers asked that same question. The Founding Fathers decided that if the government is taking or controlling one third of your productive output the system we have is no better than the feudal system we tried to replace," Badnarik said.He also spoke on topics such as the drug war. According to Badnarik, the U.S. Government has no business restricting the use of drugs. Badnarik referred to Prohibition during the early 1900s as "the first drug war.""We passed... the 18th Amendment and alcohol was now not only illegal but unconstitutional," Badnarik said. "The government ha! s no aut hority to tell you what you can or cannot drink. The 18th Amendment was technically unconstitutional."Badnarik said more people died because of alcohol during prohibition but not because they drank more. He said that it was because of the black market created by making alcohol illegal. Badnarik said he blamed bootleggers and gangsters such as Al Capone, who thrived on the underground market, for violence that resulted from a profitable black market for liquor. "We are doing the same thing with drugs," Badnarik said. He noted that Coca-Cola contained twelve grams of cocaine at one time and that opium was once available at drug stores."We didn't have the drug problem until we made it illegal, and now that it's illegal it makes a lot of money.... $10,000 to make the drugs and you can sell it for $1,000,000, and that kind of profit margin is worth killing for," Badnarik said.He also related a story of how he was arrested trying to get into a presidential debate during the last election to illustrate limitations set by government on political freedom.The lecture was followed by a question and answer period in which attendees asked about specific points of the Libertarian platform. Questions ranged from the status of Area 51 to immigration to education.

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