Say Anything Blog

We all know Stossel from his excellent television reporting, which stands out so much from the rest of the media because it is not tainted with a healthy dose of liberalism, and let me tell you that the guy is every bit as good in person as he is on television.

A point John made is that many view him as a conservative, but he’s really not.  He’s a libertarian, and that he’s probably only called a conservative because conservatives are so desperate for allies in the media that he gets lumped in.

He spent most of his speech talking about the nanny state, and how government is generally a poor solution to the problems of society, and made two great points.

First, that things like drug laws tend to create more crime than they solve.  For instance, what gave Al Capone his opportunity to be a notorious criminal was the prohibition of alcohol.  Without that opportunity, we likely wouldn’t know his name.  The same is true with drug laws.  How crimes are committed by drug users getting high and doing stupid things, and how many are committed by drug dealers who aren’t high at all but are using violence and coercion to serve a public demand for drugs?  Thinks are a lot more complicated than that, of course, but it’s something worth pondering.

Second, about this insistence by many that government exists to take care of us, Stossel said this: “Patrick Henry did not say ‘Give me absolute safety or give me death,’ he said ‘Give me liberty or give me death.”  A distinction often lost today.