I started watching the John Adamsmini-series that was on HBO tonight, and it is nothing but documentary par excellence. I’ve watched the first three episodes back to back and I just can’t get enough of it.
The series is based on David McCullough’s book on Adams and a friend from work suggested that I also watch the series. I wanted to read the book first before watching it, but that’s midway down my reading list.
Another great quote is:
Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth. No! No!
But why bother reading it when you can watch it. This is from the first episode:
The intro music is also amazing. Think I need to get that, and the Join or Die Flag.
These days, I often look back to something Dr. Paul said many years ago, in which he said that the kind of government we get is never an accident, and that we ultimately get what we deserve.
In an age where people believe that the President will pay our mortgages, fill our gas tanks, solve all of society’s ills, and become the savior of last resort in all things, the struggle to change the hearts and minds of the ignorant to the informed will be a long and hard one.
I would wager that most Americans still have no understanding of what’s going on with our economy and the credit crisis. I for one don’t fully understand it myself. While some learn life’s lessons by heeding the advice of their parents or friends, others will always have to learn the truth the hard way.
To up the ante on the wager, I would bet that as long as people are continuing to work and get paid, without regard to what their wages can buy as inflation continues to rise, most will just accept this as a fact of life. Only is it when people begin to lose their homes, jobs, and find out their money can’t buy as much as it did before will it set brushfires in peoples’ minds.
Society teaches us never to ask questions or to ever question the actions of the state, but to just work, pay taxes, and consume whatever we want. The key to solving many of our problems can be found in trusting ourselves, and having the desire and curiosity to seek out the truth.
There’s nothing unique about Flash-based video these days as YouTube was the first site to eliminate all the video plug-in headache by letting the Flash plug-in run all the video for the end-user. And newer sites such as justin.tv are pretty cool too because they’re leveraging Flash’s interactive A/V capabilities to run a broadcast.
bloggingheads.tv may seem to some as just another interactive Flash video site, but I think it’s wickedly brilliant. Putting names to faces, and going tit for tat on a variety of issues all on video just adds an amazing layer of realism that simply can’t be extracted from frisked e-mails or message board postings.
Sidenote of the day: If you’re a fan of Unsolved Mysteries, you’ll love the fact that there’s a bunch of them available on YouTube. Man, what a creepy show!
Now Sen. Mike Gravel has some very admirable positions, but I’m still confused as to why he decided to join the Libertarian Party. Aside from issues of war and peace, I can’t see how the rest of his positions are compatible with the party. It’s safe to say that he’s a statist to some degree.
This happens to be one of my favorite videos of Dr. Paul back from the New Hampshire Liberty Forum in 2007. So much my favorite, that I decided to produce a transcript of the speech.
The last three sentences are the best.
BEGIN
(show into Ron Paul 2008 logo)
(shows slide of The Iraq War Trifecta:
* Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
* Saddam Hussein is collaborating
with al-Qaeda.
* The 9-11 terrorists attacked us
because they hate freedom.)
The idea that we have to sacrifice so much, under the guise of what is necessary to protect us from terrorism. We need to understand why terrorists are anxious to come here.
People say, “Ron, you’re completely wrong.” And I get some on radio shows that might agree with our message completely. And they said, “We gotta go over there, and fight them there, because we don’t want them over here.”
I think there’s a great fallacy in that logic.
Mainly because, they came over here, because we were over there.
(applause)
As a matter of fact, if you read carefully what Osama Bin Laden, our former partner in crime says, he says, “We want you over there.” He couldn’t believe we would go over there and invade two muslim countries. His recruiting has gone up spectacularly, there had never had been any Al Qaeda in Iraq, now they have free reign in Iraq.
They don’t want that war to end.
I mean the worst thing that could happen to the al Qaeda is if we walked out of there. But they want us over there. They don’t have to come over here, they can pick us off over there.
Now there’s one reason why the enemy, and they are our enemies, want to kills us.
And that is, occupation.
We occupy their territory.
It would be like if the Chinese had their navy in the Gulf of Mexico, and had bases in New Hampshire and in Texas, and they think we wouldn’t pull out our gun and do some shooting?
(applause)
But too often, the American people won’t see it in the light. We are good, and wonderful, and perfect. And we are only going to deliver our goodness to them. We have two suggestions to the people that we try to do so much good. We go over and we tell them, “You do it our way, or we’re going to bomb you.” And then if they do it our way, we subsidize them.
What about the alternative of neither bombing nor subsidizing, and trying to get along with people, and talking to people, and trading with people?
The best demonstration of the advice that the Founders gave us is Vietnam.
What a tragedy. 60,000 deaths, and then we lose. We walk out, it was illegal, unconstitutional, undeclared war. We walk away from it, and what has happened? The country has become unified–was there a domino theory and they all become communists?
Communism failed, and they’re westernised! And we trade with them. We’re over there now investing there. I mean it’s so dramatic, and yet we never seem to learn. This message is powerful. The message of freedom, that of the free market. And allow people to run their own lives.
You know, I believe, that one of our problems has been that we have had Presidents that want to do too much. And the people in this country like a strong President.
And they got to thinking, well how can I run, you know, for an office like this and say, I want to be a weak President?
(laughter from audience)
But you know what, the answer to that is we should have a strong President.
Strong enough, to resist the temptation of taking power that a President shouldn’t have.
(applause and standing ovation)
(photo stills roll by of Dr. Paul speaking)
(fades out to the following message:)
To continue making the arugment
that the 9-11 terrorists attacked us
because they “hate freedom” is to
underestimate the resolve of
Americans to discover the truth
behind the lies and deceptions of
a failed Middle East policy.
