Good evening. I’m Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian National Committee.

Mr. President, in your State of the Union address, you propose to make Big Government even bigger.

You propose pouring more taxpayer dollars into another federal education program, this time for community colleges. But federal intervention has driven up the price of higher education.

What if we could make college affordable right now by simply getting government out of higher ed? Without subsidies and costly mandates, competition will force colleges to decrease their tuition or go out of business. Massive student debt would be a thing of the past.

Mr. President, we can have world-class education. The first step is defunding and eliminating the federal Department of Education, abolishing Common Core, and allowing parents to take full control over their children’s education. Free-market competition will raise educational standards, lower costs, and prepare students to compete in a global economy.

Mr. President, your attempts to raise the minimum wage will destroy one of the most important forms of education in this country. Many young people develop responsibility and marketable skills in entry-level, minimum-wage jobs. Those skills make workers more attractive to future employers.

The Republican answer, to leave the issue to the states, is a cop-out. All minimum wages kill jobs and hurt the poor. Libertarian candidates have pledged to sponsor legislation to eliminate the minimum wage in every state. That makes it easier for young people to gain experience, for the poorest workers to gain a foothold in the job market, and for small businesses to grow.

Here’s how we really grow the economy and create jobs: dramatically cut taxes and government spending. Libertarian candidates have pledged to sponsor legislation to cut federal spending to 1998 levels and eliminate the income tax. That means that you keep the money you earn, and spend it how you see fit: on charities and the arts, science research, education, and the health care of your choice.

Eliminating the income tax also defunds government’s ability to infringe on our privacy, to create enemies through needless wars, and to imprison our fellow citizens for victimless crimes.

Mr. President, so many of your supporters have begged you to defund and end the War on Drugs, but you have refused their pleas. Drug prohibition separates families, fosters violence, and destroys communities. You can end the war on drugs today, by doing what so many Libertarian gubernatorial and presidential candidates have pledged to do: pardon all nonviolent drug offenders.

Libertarian candidates have pledged to completely end the war on drugs, and thereby eliminate the black market profits that fund violent cartels. Ending the Drug War will make our streets safer, and people will no longer have to fear incarceration if they seek help overcoming an addiction.

Mr. President, over the last weeks you have repeatedly argued that Americans should be able to go online without risking their privacy. On that, we completely agree. Americans should be able to use their computers and phones without fear of anyone listening in or recording their communications through mass surveillance.

But your words, Mr. President, don’t match your actions. You have funded and enabled the surveillance state. To protect privacy, Libertarian candidates have pledged to defund the NSA’s mass surveillance program, repeal the Patriot Act, and massively downsize and consolidate redundant spy agencies.

Mr. President, your party and the Republican Party are damaging lives here and abroad through misuse and overuse of the military.

Libertarian candidates have pledged to sponsor legislation to end all foreign military operations, shut down needless foreign bases, cut military spending by at least 60 percent, and bring our troops home.

Even after those spending cuts, we will still outspend both Russia and China combined. We will also be safer, because our military will be focused on defense. We will stop creating enemies through unwarranted military intrusions.

Republicans have talked about repealing and replacing Obamacare. With what? Romneycare? That will continue to damage businesses and make health care worse.

When Republicans controlled the House, they had the chance to defund Obamacare. They refused.

Libertarian candidates have pledged to completely repeal Obamacare along with the many laws that stand in the way of low-cost, high-quality health care. Providers will compete for customers by lowering costs and increasing quality.

To help people in need, Libertarian candidates will make charitable hospitals legal. Doctors should not have to leave our borders to be able to offer free care.

We need to massively downsize and defund the federal government. But Republican and Democratic politicians only want to make it bigger. Get involved with the Libertarian Party in your state by going to LP.org, and by voting Libertarian.

Politicians can do one thing well: count votes. When you vote for a Democrat or Republican, it tells them, “Keep doing what you’re doing.” But when you vote for a Libertarian, it tells them, in no uncertain terms, “You have neither my approval nor my permission to grow or sustain Big Government. Shrink it now.”

Thank you for listening. Let’s bring liberty back to our communities and to the United States of America.

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By Tom Purcell

Boy, does the world need a better sense of humor right about now.

Humor, says Merriam-Webster, is “the ability to be funny or to be amused by things that are funny.”

Humans are at their best when they are amused. Few things can better reduce stress or shed light on truth than a good joke.

President Reagan had a grand sense of humor — and used it with great deftness to advance his program.

He told one joke about a man, then living in the Soviet Union, who went to a government office to order a new car. When he laid down his money, he was told there would be a long wait.

“Come back in 10 years and pick up your car,” said the government servant.

“Morning or afternoon?” said the man.

“What difference does it make?” said the servant.

“Because the plumber is coming in the morning.”

British academic and joke theorist Christy Davies says a good joke can help clarify and express complex feelings. A good joke can cut to the heart of the matter better than any speech or law or government policy.

The lack of a sense of humor can do the opposite.

When I was younger, and going through a rough patch in my career, I was miserable.

After I’d been moping around for a few months, my mother let me have it.

“You have lost your sense of humor,” she said, “and you need to get it back.”

She was correct. Lacking good humor, I trapped myself in the narrowness of my own small consciousness, making relatively small challenges into giant problems.

A sense of humor is the way out of narrowness. Learning to laugh at yourself is healthy. And people who laugh the hardest are always the healthiest.

True, laughter often depends, as the old saying goes, on whose ox is being gored.

“Saturday Night Live” founder Lorne Michaels has noted that the show often pokes fun at Republican politicians because Republicans find it funny — they don’t take the ribbing as personally as do some with other political points of view, he said.

I didn’t know much about Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper that was attacked by terrorists 11 days ago. Two gunmen killed 12 people in the editorial office.

As it went, the magazine had published provocative cartoons that caricatured the founder of Islam, and the terrorists entered the building with guns to exact revenge. The cartoons apparently didn’t tickle the gunmen’s funny bone.

The magazine has been criticized by some for publishing such provocative cartoons and for also lampooning Judaism and Catholicism in a highly provocative manner (one cartoon showed nuns masturbating, and another showed the pope wearing a condom).

Though some may find such satire insulting and inflammatory, the Charlie Hebdo editors and cartoonists did not deserve to be killed for publishing it, and the acts of the two gunmen who killed them can in no way be validated by anyone.

The handful of critics who suggest that the editors and cartoonists partly brought the attack on themselves are missing the point. Nobody should be murdered because of satire. Ever.

The fact is, we have far more to fear from those who wish to repress expression and censor jokes and cartoons than we do from the jokes and cartoons themselves.

And though biting satire may be unpleasant at times to some, one thing we can agree on is this: We need more good humor in the world and we need it fast.

Here’s one joke I think we can all agree on:

“It’s so cold today, the politicians had their hands in their own pockets.”

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©2014 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s Childhood” and “Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!” is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc.