“During my life of over half a century, this country has been in perpetual undeclared war and police action,” Randy Luallin’s voice rang out, beginning his speech at a political rally in Loveland.

The fact that our Congress hasn’t passed a declaration of war for decades despite perpetual global interventionism is well known, but the only congressional candidate in Fort Collins’ district that actively advocates abiding by the War Powers Resolution is Randy Luallin.

I sat down with Luallin, Libertarian candidate for U.S. Congress District 2 (Larimer County’s district), Monday, and found that he does not shy away from the truth. Randy Luallin is not afraid to address issues often left unspoken by Republicans and Democrats.

“The current paradigm that has been in existence ever since I’ve been born is not going to change if we keep electing Republicans and Democrats,” Luallin told me. He is advocating a real change in Washington, one that can’t be accomplished by electing the same partisan politicians.

“What we as Libertarians advocate is peace and prosperity, bring our troops home, self defense only, return to the constitution, protect individual rights,” he explained. “We’re advocating abolishing the income tax and replacing it with the Fair Tax.”

The other two candidates running in this election represent the two major political parties, which Luallin says differ only in “how they’re going to tax you, how they’re going to spend your money, and how they’re going to wage war.”

Randy Luallin is the only candidate that will bring all of our troops home and the only one proposing we only use our military for defense, not for preemptive strikes.

“It’s time for us to realize we’re not the world’s policemen,” Luallin told me. “Our military is for defense only. We can have the finest defense in the whole world but we don’t have to have bases all over the world.”

Luallin refuses to believe the fear mongering from our government that has been going on for decades. From the communist scare, to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, the government uses “fear to motivate the American people and get them on board,” Luallin said.

Luallin advocates governmental transparency and full disclosure to the American people. This is something many politicians pay lip service to, but few follow through on.

President Obama even went as far as to claim he would reward whistleblowers, but his administration has charged more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than every previous administration combined — so much for the “most transparent administration ever.”

Luallin believes Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned by the U.S. for leaking classified information, did the right thing. “What I’m advocating is transparency,” Luallin said. “How many secrets do we need? What really constitutes necessity for secrecy? Very little.”

This is where Luallin truly differs from other candidates — in the fact that he truly believes the power lies with the people and ardently supports the Tenth Amendment.

He doesn’t believe that the government knows best, or that there are just some things that the American public shouldn’t know about. “I can deal with truth,” Luallin said. “It might be painful, it might be difficult, but I can’t deal with a lie.”

The corrupting influence of money and Super PACs on our political system is slowly destroying the integrity of our government, but Luallin said to combat this, we “don’t need another law. We don’t need more legislation. We need, as a people, to wake up.”

It is the responsibility of the American people to research candidates and choose which is the best man to vote for. “Let them spend their millions,” Luallin said. “Let them dog us with media and half truths,” we the people must not succumb to the influence of their campaign contributions.

Luallin is the only candidate running for congress in our district that will end the drug war, vote “pro-choice” on everything and vows to always fight for your individual liberties.

He is the only candidate for our district that talks about protecting our constitutional rights — including privacy from government spying and preventing laws forbidding protest.

There are very serious issues our country is facing, issues that Republicans and Democrats — both locally and nationally — refuse to acknowledge.

If Randy Luallin is the only person running for Congress in our district who is willing to be honest and discuss these issues, he is the only candidate who will get my vote.

Editorial Editor Kevin Jensen is a senior English major. His column appears Tuesdays in the Collegian. He can be reached at  kjensen@collegian.com or on Twitter @kevinrjensen.