I’ve never heard of this guy before but he has a lot to say and he was very entertaining to listen to. Check him out!

It’s nice to know that nothing, like the Iraq war, the housing crisis, the unadmitted recession, can rain on Mr. Bush’s parade.  And most of the nation is as entertained by this as the woman sitting to his left.  Source.

If you started your own business, which happened to be providing music, news and comedy for paying customers, why would the federal government have any say over the content you included?  If you were writing a book, should you have to include a heroic Native American character as per Uncle Sam?  If you made a movie, should you have to make it tell a story set in the US where an Italian immigrant did something nice?  What kind of shit is that!?  Today the FCC approved the Sirius/XM merger, but with a few conditions.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of a proposal that would allow the deal to proceed as long as the companies meet a series of consumer protection conditions, including a three-year cap on prices, set-aside of channels for minority and non-commercial programming and payment of a $19.7 million penalty for past FCC rule violations. Source.

Now, who do you think knows what their customers want:  the satellite radio companies themselves or the massive bureaucracy of the FCC?  Sirius alone was already offering channels for kids, women, gays, lesbians, and various religious content.

A quick Google shows that out of the the total population of the US, 20% of us aren’t white and 7% of us have satellite radio.  Based solely on those numbers, that means that satellite radio already has over 4 million minority customers, amongst which I count myself.  If we weren’t getting suitable programming, do you really think we’d be shelling out $12 a month for it?

My favorite color is blue.  At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before the federal government begins to mandate that in a given office building the color of paint on the walls must be divided equally between the 7 hues of the visible spectrum to support diversity because we are too stupid to choose a color of paint for ourselves.

Apparently all of us in America need the federal government to step in and mandate that a company offer a specific amount of programming to one type of person or another.  Apparently we minorities are too dumb to choose what entertainment services to purchase, what radio stations to listen to and what content to be entertained by.  If we let the federal government and agencies like the FCC continue to destroy the free market, maybe we are as dumb as they think we are.  Legislation like this is an insult to everybody involved in these companies from the top down.

I’ve had Libertarian ideas before I even knew that’s what they were.  When I was in high school, it made me sick to walk through a metal detector and have my backpack rummaged through.  My backpack was my own personal property.  To have every student that walked through the door presumed guilty of having some type of drugs or weapons was an insult. I’m not going to go overboard with trying to convince you to read this book. All I will say is that if you ever plan to vote for a president in the US, you need to do so only after reading this book.

My eyes have been opened even further upon reading this short book.  It is surprisingly light reading, even given it’s subject matter, but Dr. Paul is still manages to drive home the importance of his ideals of less government and more liberty.  I’ll end with a few excerpts.

“Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us “change,” and 2008 has been no different.  But in the American political lexicon, “change” always means more of the same:  more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.”

“…Every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine:  two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.”

“[The] mainstream media…focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion.  This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines…and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans.  Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic.  Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

“Early on in my presidential campaign, people began describing my message and agenda as a “revolution.”  In a way, it is, albeit a peaceful one.  In a country with a political debate as restricted as ours, it is revolutionary to ask whether we need troops in 130 countries and whether the non-interventionist foreign policy recommended by our Founding Fathers might not be better.  Is it revolutionary to ask whether the accumulation of more and more power in Washington has been good for us.  It is revolutionary to ask fundamental questions about privacy, police-state measures, taxation, social policy, and countless other matters.”

Not.

According to a Rockefeller Foundation poll, 85% of us believe that the country is on the wrong track.  Nearly half of those between ages 18 and 29 say America was better in the 90s.  People in that age group weren’t that old in he 90s, however, and you should probably ask their parents what they think.  82% want public works projects, paid for, of course, by our taxes, to save the economy.  70% say more government programs should help those now struggling.

Why do so many people think that the government that got us into this financial mess actually has the power or the know-how to fix things?  Why is everybody giving up and holding out their hands to wait for the government to take care of them?  Where is the work ethic that once pushed people to either work more or make yourself worth more to earn more money?

The amount of government we have has gotten us to where we are now.  More government will only mean more taxes and more problems.  We need to eliminate income tax and personal property tax right off the bat.  From there we need to reduce our military involvement from 130 countries around the world to one: ours.  We need to stop foreign aid and take of ourselves for a change.

We need to drastically reconfigure our government to a simpler, more economical version, the likes of which we haven’t seen for nearly 100 years.  But as long as 70% of people think MORE government is the answer, we will only continue along this path of decline.  That being the case, it looks more and more like our experiment in democracy is failing and this country is being swallowed by socialism.

I know, it sounds over the top, but wait until you read the stories behind the two headlines that have appeared with in a couple months of each other:

Schoolboys disciplined for ‘refusing to pray to Allah’ sites an instance where two 11-12 year old boys were given detention for not participating in a teacher’s instruction of how to pray to Allah.

Toddlers who dislike spicy food ‘racist’ explains that England’s National Children’s Bureau has published instructions for teachers to disallow children to say, “Yuck!” to express their displeasure with food or when a classmate smells, calling it racist.

This is the writing on the wall.  England is the example we must use to avoid things like this in our own country.  The politically correct movement is a dangerous thing.  The first amendment provides for us to be free to practice any religion, but the politically correct crowd want things like Muslim foot-washing sinks installed in every public bathroom facility.

Freedom of religion is great, and in fact the cornerstone of our country, but nobody should be forced to cater to one denomination or another.  Where’s the freedom in that?