Stossel: Fight Back

Stossel: Fight Back – Don't Let Big Brother Take Your Freedom Paige McKenzie, NewsMax.com Wednesday, March 31, 2004 PALM BEACH, Fla. – John Stossel wants you to stop being afraid. Remember what you were afraid of last year? Or five years ago? Probably not, but if enough other people were scared of the same thing, then somewhere in Washington, D.C., there could be a new government agency to “protect” you. And your tax money is helping to pay for it.

Stossel, anchorman of ABC's "20/20" and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media," urged a group in South Florida to fight their fears, and the agents who are using it to steal our freedom.

“Remember the dead-eyed look of the people in the Soviet Union?” he asked. “That’s the same look of people who live in a bureaucratic state.”

Americans, said Stossel, have allowed themselves to become a nation afflicted with “Chicken Little syndrome,” as he writes in his new best seller, promoted at the event.

Deluded by the myth of “protection,” we have become willing pawns in a joint partnership by the media, the trial lawyers and big-government politicians to perpetuate a cycle of fear that works to their benefit, as Stossel explained.

The media use fear to panic the people, politicians use it to pander, and the trial lawyers promise to make somebody pay, all in the name of junk science fostered on the public by people with their own political agendas.

No one seems willing to question political celebrities, such as Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf, Stossel has noted, when they throw out false statistics.

The junk science promotes panic and bankrupts companies, which costs thousands of jobs and takes our tax money “by giving fame to bureaucrats who go on to build their own little government empires,” Stossel writes in his book. This is the damage that results when people refuse to accept that “association is not causation.”

Stossel gave credit at the event to reporters for being “fairly smart” about art, culture and similar subjects. “But reporters are not knowledgeable on matters of science and free markets,” he said.

“They hate the businesses, which pay you, and they love the government, which takes a third to a half of your income. I’ve never been able to make sense of this.”

Stossel writes that reporters see patterns where there are none and ignore the political agendas of those claiming scientific “discoveries,” and that the “statistical noise” of junk science gets reported over and over again, while the truth rarely does.

“When media report false information, the public demands action and politicians pander,” he writes.

Remember crack babies and poisonous, leaking silicone breast implants? Myths of junk science. Stossel writes about a horrifying story of one woman who became so terrified she took a razor to her own breasts.

By the time someone reports how wrong the junk science was, Stossel explained to the crowd, lawyers have gotten rich bankrupting good companies that made products that extend our lives. And there’s a new regulatory agency to “protect” us.

“Why do we assume government workers are what we need to make us safe?” Stossel asks in his book. “If you think government employees do things better, visit your local Department of Motor Vehicles.”

In the meantime, what we should fear most is happening – more freedom is lost to pages and pages of new regulations, restricting the innovators who improve our lives, and we’re no safer than we were.

“We don’t know how many lives would be saved if we let the innovators innovate freely,” Stossel told his audience. “Why must the FDA be a police agency .... Why couldn’t it be an informational agency? We would learn more, and save more lives.”

In reality, said Stossel, the big-government bureaucrats do the most harm, and the free market protects us most.

“It’s the poor people who get squeezed out by the rules,” Stossel said. “Freedom protects the poor and the ignorant. The ruthless competition of a free market protects us better than the government. Markets police themselves. The good companies thrive, the bad ones atrophy. For the most part, in a free society, word gets out.

“When you interfere with the market, the hidden unseen consequences are worse than the benefits. ... Government regulation has nasty, unlimited side effects.”

As an example, Stossel has cited that 98 percent of incumbent politicians get re-elected and campaign finance “reform” has made it even more difficult for challengers to raise enough money to run against them.

Though politicians are always preaching about helping the poor, the way we could really help the poor is with “the system that is vilified by the elites” – free-market capitalism.

In fact, Stossel said in his speech, the free market works even in places you normally wouldn’t think it would, and cites the government sponsored Public Broadcasting System as an example.

“There’s no consumer reporting on PBS because the timid bureaucrats who run it are too afraid of offending someone. But you will find consumer reporting on commercial stations.”

He noted that today the government is about 40 percent of the economy. “This is not what the founding fathers had in mind.”

In “Give Me a Break,” he writes, “Today government runs trains, subways, schools, parks, public housing, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and a war on drugs. It subsidizes students, farmers, ranchers, Indians, researchers, volunteers, small businessmen, rich businessmen, and artists.

“It polices the world and at home polices our speech, jobs, schools, sports, and bedrooms. Maybe if it weren’t doing all those things – badly – it would do a better job doing what it should do: like protect us from terrorists. The one thing the Constitution mandates it has to do.”

According to Stossel, when America began government cost every citizen $20 (in today’s money) a year. Now the government costs every adult and child an average of $10,000 a year. Americans pay more in taxes than we do for food, clothing and shelter combined.

But so many Americans always seem to want government do more, thinking that it should even protect us from ourselves.

Witness the hype over the “American obesity epidemic.” Stossel, a libertarian, also makes this argument about the drug war and prostitution.

“There’s no end to what government should do if its job is to protect us from ourselves. Patrick Henry didn’t say give me absolute safety or give me death,” Stossel observed, which drew choruses of laughter from the Palm Beach attendees.

Stossel told NewsMax that he considered the Department of Agriculture to be the worst government agency. He cites lots of evidence in “Give Me a Break.” For example, in 1900 America had 6 million farms, and the DOA employed 3,000 people. Today there are 2 million farms, but the DOA employs 100,000 people.

Among the alphabet soup of government agencies, he also notes that the Environmental Protection Agency has shut down entire towns all because of “potential risks” from junk-science dangers and that the Transportation Security Administration really stands for Thousands Standing Around.

“What would it have done for the economy to allow private companies to handle airport security? Instead we take more of taxpayers money to pay unionized bureaucrats.”

Aside from government bureaucracy, Stossel told NewsMax that trial lawyers are the biggest threat to America’s freedom.

He didn’t always believe that. In fact, he thought they were protecting people, he said.

But after 20-some years – and almost as many Emmys – reporting on consumer scams and the “efforts” of regulatory agencies and trial lawyers to “protect” the scammees, Stossel finally realized something.

“I learned they weren’t making people safer, they were making themselves rich. Most of the money goes to the lawyers. That’s disgusting. Repulsive,” he told the Palm Beach crowd. “Trial lawyers are the invisible fist in America.”

He cited the example of suits against vaccine companies that were making vaccines to save lives. Thanks to lawsuits, we now have four vaccine companies instead of 20, Stossel said.

“Now in this age of terrorism and potential bioterrorism, are we safer with four vaccine companies instead of 20?”

He noted that this is how trial lawyer and former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards made his money – suing companies to protect people from mythical dangers and ending up with a large portion, if not most, of the money.

“The lawyers fight, then shake hands on their way to the bank,” he writes in his book. “What kind of victim-compensation system is that? It takes ... years to get your money – and the lawyers take most if it?”

With attorneys sometimes getting up to $330,000 an hour, Stossel writes that the civil judicial system has become its own industry destroying other entire industries with shakedown lawsuits adding costs to products, driving up insurance rates, and taking away freedom – “you can’t get your burger or steak cooked the way you want.”

In “Give Me a Break,” Stossel reports on the junk science of secondhand smoke and the entire tobacco-suit fiasco, and quotes Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute. “It is the foulest, rankest scandal I have seen in 20 years in Washington.”

And, Stossel continues, Harvard Law School economist Kip Viscusi has noted, “What the state calculations don’t take into account is that smokers don’t live as long as non-smokers. In other words, the gruesome truth is that smokers save America money because they die sooner, thereby collecting less in Social Security and pension money.”

Stossel writes, “Destructive litigation is a particularly American problem. ... We are the only advanced country in which I can sue you, wreck your life, be wrong, and then just walk away. It’s the reason Americans file some 90 million lawsuits a year – one every three seconds.”

Though the book has rapidly become a best seller, Stossel says it’s not winning him any points with his colleagues.

“There’s an anchor over at ABC who won’t speak to me anymore. He turns the other way when he sees me in the hallway,” he told event attendees good-naturedly.

Stossel says they’ve labeled him a conservative, even though he’s a libertarian and liberal on many issues.

“The media say ‘conservative’ the way they say ‘that child molester,’” he told his audience. “Today everything I do is censored by two producers and two lawyers. As a consumer reporter I was only censored once.”

And since he's stopped promoting bigger government and become a fan of capitalism, Stossel said he's also stopped winning Emmys.

However, he is grateful, he said, that ABC continues to let him report his stories in spite of the fact that many at the network disagree with him.

Stossel told NewsMax he doesn't think he's making much headway in exposing the evils of big government. “I don’t think I’m having much effect. I’m not optimistic. Thomas Jefferson said it’s the natural progress of things for government to grow and liberty to yield, and that’s what's happening.”

He also told us, “We’re less free than we've ever been for most of the history of America.”

Stossel asked his audience: “When did we become so wimpy? Why are we giving up on the freedom that makes this country possible?

“Today our lives are being extended because of the freedom we’re now so afraid of. I would urge you to fight for that freedom.”

Most Americans welcome the Nanny State with open arms. Even if they get upset about one particular bureaucratic dictatorship, they'll willingly accept it to preserve the ones of which they approve. Never underestimate the American compulsion for telling others how to live their lives.

One of my favorite quotes is appropriate here.

The Scottish Jurist and Historian Sir Alex Fraser Tyler published a collection of lectures in 1801. He advanced a theory of democracy based on historical observation:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until voters discover that they can vote themselves largeses from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."

Is Sir Tyler correct? Where are we are in Sir Tyler's progression?

One of my favorite quotes also. In fact, I have it posted in my cubicle here at work as a constant reminder.

I also have this one by P.J. O'Rourke:

"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle."

The obesity thing in kids is funny. Remember a few years ago (two? three?) when the real nutrition problem was anorexia in teen and pre teen girls. The fems were filling the airwaves with attacks on advertising for portraying the ideal female in a totally unrealistic and unachievable way. We thought our daughters were killing themselves. Now I guess they're Big Mac(king) themselves to death. But does anyone really hear John Stossel??

"Most Americans welcome the Nanny State with open arms."

AMENDMENT XIX (Proposed by Congress June 4, 1919. Ratified August 18, 1920.) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. (should have been "gender") Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Oh how I love the ladies and can't live without them.

But ladies, most of you do not have the temperment to live free and exert your the rights of liberty.

Subsequently, the ladies are 50% of the voters of which, weak, pandering male politicians pander to the ladies inherent need for socialism.

It is not that we are giving our freedom away, or allowing it to be taken from us. Most people don't realize that this is happening. We are lulled to sleep by material comforts. It's like having your home burglarized while you are asleep. You won't discover what happened until you WAKE UP! The Romans knew this. That's why they gave the people Circus and bread. They become easier to control. You only see outrage when a luxury is threatened. An example is the smoking ban. It bothers me that conservatives can be so angry and active over the smoking ban (and rightly so) yet sit idly by while more important freedoms such as religious freedom (Christian) are threatened. Orwell was definately a prophet.

Deluded by the myth of “protection,” we have become willing pawns in a joint partnership by the media, the trial lawyers and big-government politicians to perpetuate a cycle of fear that works to their benefit, as Stossel explained.

Ping!

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