Dan Carlin's Common Sense is the best political podcast out there. He's an extremely independent person, famous for attacking all opinions, and for his controversial thought experiments you wouldn't normally think of. When I first started listening to him back when I was a Democrat fanboy, I both loved him and wanted to strangle him at the same time. But he was the only political commentator who made me think and question myself, so I kept coming back. I just started listening to him again after a long while, and I don't know if it's because he's softened, or if my opinions have just shifted a lot, or maybe both, but I find myself agreeing with him much more often.
His newest episode, out yesterday, is about the absolute most important issue in the country at the moment: the NDAA, and the further erosion of our civil liberties.
What happens to "The Land of the Free" when it is no longer "The Home of the Brave"? You get the evisceration of constitutional protections in the name of fighting terrorism. Dan wonders why everyone is surprised.
An extremely important point Dan makes, which I really don't think is being said enough, is that the NDAA doesn't surpass anything the past two administrations have already been doing. All the the NDAA does is make indefinite military detentions of citizens "legal." He went on near the end of the episode to do something extremely drastic, and he's getting a lot of flak for it on his forums: he's actually throwing in his support for a presidential candidate. He stated very explicitly that he's going to vote for Ron Paul, and for the exact same reasons that I lined out earlier this week. He sees an extremely scary future if this shit isn't stopped now, and since Paul is the only person who's speaking out about these things at all, we should probably try to support him, in spite of how much we might disagree with him on all his other issues.
Carlin makes another great point -- he highly doubts the GOP would ever pick Paul, and the only thing he hopes to accomplish by doing this is simply to get civil liberties in the national discussion. The Bill of Rights is in ruins, the 4th amendment is practically gone, the NDAA will do the same for the 6th after Obama signs it, and nobody is talking about any of it. If nothing else, Paul would be able to call Obama out on his fascist bullshit, since the liberal "pro-liberties" class has mysteriously gone missing.
I think this is a wonderful episode, and if you were at all confused or angry about my Ron Paul post, I would strongly recommend you listen to it, if only to get a better understanding of where I was coming from. It's about 50 minutes. You should also subscribe to both of his podcasts (he also runs a history podcast called Hardcore History, simply fantastic, can't recommend it enough). And in closing I think I'll just leave this right here to scare the fucking shit out of you.
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