Give Me A Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media by John Stossel 2004 – Book Highlights & Commentary 

Contents of ‘Give Me a Break!’

1 What happened to Stossel

2 Confrontations

3 Confusion

4 Epiphany

5 Scaring Ourselves to Death

6 Junk Science and Junk Reporting

7 Government

8 Welfare for the Rich

9 The Trouble with Lawyers

10 The Left Takes Notice

11 It’s Not My Fault! (Victim Mentality)

12 But What About the Poor?

13 Greed or Ambition?

14 Owning Your Body

15 Free Speech

Introductory Note: Stossel is a libertarian. Someone who has a basically hands-off morality approach; he says let people do whatever they want. There’s some truth to this, but it has limits. So there are several key things I disagree with that I’ll point out here and there. But I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. He still has tons of great stuff to teach, if you can discern between what’s good and what’s not.

Note: My notes won’t always fall in the exact sequence of the book, so if you’re comparing my notes to the book and something doesn’t match up, it’s from surrounding chapters.

Book Chapters:

1 What happened to Stossel

2 Confrontations

3 Confusion

4 Epiphany

5 Scaring Ourselves to Death

6 Junk Science and Junk Reporting

7 Government

8 Welfare for the Rich

9 The Trouble with Lawyers

10 The Left Takes Notice

11 It’s Not My Fault! (Victim Mentality)

12 But What About the Poor?

13 Greed or Ambition?

14 Owning Your Body

15 Free Speech

 

Ch. 1-3: 1 What Happened to Stossel & Ch. 2 Confrontations

Ch. 1 What Happened to Stossel

When Stossel exposed corrupt business, the media loved him. But when he exposed corrupt government, media turned on him, and the left rejected him.

A good job will teach you more than school, and they’ll pay you for it.

Union work discourages creativity and innovation. They have no reason to hurry because no one ever gets fired. They have no reason to work harder because everyone gets paid the same. They say things like ‘it can’t be done, it’s against the rules’ rather than innovating.

Even when your boss is a jerk you can be grateful that he hired you.

When he couldn’t get a hired research assistant at his job, he called around to colleges to get volunteer interns.

Sometimes we have a personality problem where we live for the next achievement and then we’re happy for a little bit, and we’re back to being nervous and worried.

Note: We need to focus on truly meaningful goals, or attaining the goals we set won’t bring fulfillment. Life is a mission, not a career. And yes, there’s something to being able to have joy in the journey and not being hyperfocused on advancement. Perhaps service to others, especially via family life, is the best way to check ourselves in these matters. End note.

He was a consumer reporter, yet the lawyers got mad at him for calling out specific brands. So he threatened to quit and the lawyers came up with some way for him to be able to mention the brands, and he went on to do tons of important work exposing frauds.

Ch. 2 Confrontation

Confrontation (aka debate & asking hard questions) allows you to listen to both sides under pressure and decide for yourself. So he was an in-your-face reporter. Sometimes we have to ask rude questions when we catch people lying. Often he had to ask people several times before they’d confess. He just keeps asking the same question. People are shocked when they get confronted directly about missing money. When he would expose people for lying they would just go on in their lies.

Back in the day he could do private recordings to expose people, but now there’s privacy laws where you can’t do that as much.

Some doctors were falsely reporting women as pregnant so they could get paid for doing an abortion on them.

Some cosmetics companies were selling cheap stuff just in different labeled bottles.

 

Ch. 3 Confusion (Regulations)

Every regulation has unintended consequences. Tax dollars have a way of getting into the pockets of the rich. Regulations often hurt people rather than protect them. When Stossel exposed businesses, a bad, unintended consequence would happen – the government people would want to make all kinds of news regulations. But those regulations often do more harm than good.

The consumer protection agency which was created as a result of Stossel’s reporting did little to help people. They forced more people to have licenses. Licensing doesn’t make life better. The costs are passed on to the consumers. There are so many consumer protection laws now it’s impossible to keep track of them. Companies who can’t afford lawyers have to just ignore these laws.

Most bureaucracies just shuffle papers to kill time. Sometimes they catch somebody doing something wrong, but most of the time people are in compliance.

When these agencies find unlicensed businesses, they shut them down. Those businesses usually weren’t doing anything wrong, they just didn’t have a license. They were the businesses on the fringe, the ones most likely to give cheap services to poor neighborhoods. The regulations usually just benefit the unions and the entrenched businesses, protecting them from competition.

Politicians say we need to build businesses but they put up all kinds of barriers to entry that discourage new business.

One hair braiding company was ordered to cease and desist because they didn’t have a license. It was said that people who do hair use dangerous chemicals and need a license, but this company didn’t dye or perm any hair or use any chemicals, they just braided hair. The competing businesses were the ones that pushed prosecution against this lady’s business, they wanted her to take years of unpaid extensive training.

Note: Leave it to the government to overly-generalize and put arbitrary limits on freedom. End note.

Innovators don’t join boards; they’re too busy innovating. Consumers don’t join boards, they don’t care, it’s just a hair company and they don’t get their hair done that often. Scientists, doctors and experts in commerce don’t want to get involved in agencies, they’re too busy doing useful things. So who usually runs the government agency boards? Established businesses who are trying to limit others from entering their playing field.

Note: As Stossel said elsewhere, people who like to be on committees tend to think like socialists. End note.

One person admitted that the salon boards are usually 90% run by established salon owners to use their power to stifle competition.

People pay $5,000 for a funeral. Somebody tried opening a business selling cheap caskets, and the funeral government board shut him down because he didn’t have a license.

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 sets wages on union construction jobs. Those who support Davis Bacon law make good money from it, and there’s little chance it’ll ever be repealed. The union jobs often pay double. In theory it means people are protected from exploitative business owners, but in practice it means those union employees benefit while everyone else doesn’t. The work goes to union contractors rather than small businesses.

Union workers are paid higher at the expense of taxpayers. Unions get the contracts for government jobs and it costs the government way more. Some say we need these union companies to build stuff so it’s safe, but there’s plenty of buildings that are safe, not done by the union companies, done for much cheaper. Supply and demand are flexible and respond in real time to the market, unlike union wages.

Basic jobs are called sweatshops. The workers want the jobs. When the government shuts these jobs down, the illegal workers just go find somewhere else illegal to work.

Back in the day, young unskilled laborers could work on the job site for a low wage and get skills. Now that’s not an option. One underage kid was working as a bat boy for a major baseball team. The government shut him down due to his age. The law was that kids under 16 can’t work on school nights. But why should all the other kids get to spend their time sitting around watching the baseball games on school nights while this kid can’t spend his school night doing a job he wants to do? The case of this bat boy got lots of press and some people intervened so he could keep his job, but this is a rare exception.

Note: Great point – if you’re going to outlaw youth for working school nights, you better also outlaw them from playing on school nights. End note.

Let parents make the choices for the kids, not the government. It’s probably not going to kill a kid to have some paid work to do in good settings which the parents can help them find.

There are unintended consequences to regulation such as medical drugs taking a long time to get cleared which could have saved many lives. Think about all the lives that weren’t saved in the decade it took the drug to get cleared.

Oftentimes to avoid all the paperwork and lawyers people just avoid doing stuff that’s regulated and go find a different business to focus on. This means there’s entire categories of services that we aren’t getting, especially not as good as we could get them.

People should have the freedom to choose without an agency of the government making all decisions. Some people want to take a risk, others will not, leave it to them. Getting the FDA’s seal of approval should be optional. Private regulatory agencies can compete with government agencies like the FDA to give us even better quality audits.

Note: All people have different dispositions and skills. To some, walking on narrow catwalks is little risk, and they’re happy to do it. For others, this wouldn’t go so well. So let the people choose what works for them. Everything in life is a tradeoff, there’s no such thing as a risk-free life. End note.

Notwithstanding the regulations and agencies, people still sell bogus stuff. The crooks will do what they do regardless of rules. It’s the honest businesses that get delayed by the regulations.

Without licensing how would we know which doctors were good? By word of mouth, by newspapers, by experience, by the same way as we know which computers and cars are good. In a free society we will be more vigilant in looking for what’s good and what’s bad. In a society where the government tells you what’s safe, people become lazy and just do whatever the government tells them. In a free society, in the age of the internet, word will get out immediately about what’s good and what’s not.

The lawyers, politicians and regulators are the people who are really ripping us off. The liberal talking points are that ‘no risk is acceptable’ and ‘corporations are evil.’ The reality is that the free market allows us to voluntarily buy or not buy what we want. Yes, we have a government and contracts and courts to enforce the very basic rules of not hitting people and not stealing stuff, but when the government grows to try and meet everyone’s needs and wants, it quickly gets out of control and becomes wildly ineffective.

Companies police themselves so they have quality goods and services that people actually want. But the government almost never polices itself. When the government fails to meet a goal, it says that’s proof they need more money. (That’s not how it works in the real (accountable) world.) Not only do most people have morals, but they’ll also make more revenue if they’re known as a reputable honest company.

Note: in his book Stealing America, Dinesh D’Souza identifies that the two groups of people always looking out for others, to serve them, are capitalists and priests. Capitalism is all about giving people what they want. End note.

Ch. 4 Epiphany (Free Market Works Best)

When the government got out of the way, shipping became much more efficient.

Communists rely on experts. Thomas Sowell calls it ‘the conceit of the anointed,’ the idea that other people know better than you. The experts insist on maintaining control even when they fail repeatedly.

Note: In a free society, we can make choices based on information we encounter without being experts. We can hear an explanation of one side, hear an explanation of the other, and make a choice. It is a tyrannical society that says the commoners can’t be involved in the decision making. End note.

Note: You hear this line all the time from evolutionists too – “us peasants couldn’t possibly understand ‘the science.’ Better just trust the experts”. Point out flaws in their theory? “Oh, you’re just misrepresenting ‘the science.’” After all, you’re not on ‘their team.’ End note.

A lot of forests burn because the government doesn’t let them be touched. Privately owned forests clear away underbrush so there’s a lot less fires.

The permit process often takes longer than the actual construction.

Note: And in building a home, about half the cost is getting the permits. This is a prime example of government extortion. Deregulate, and get rid of the armies of regulation-checkers. Let the people choose what type and quality of home they want to and are able to invest in. There are plenty of inspectors happy to be hired to tell people the pros and cons of a home. People will choose what they can afford and will build and buy accordingly. Endless regulations not only make a large barrier to enter a profession, but they make working in that profession much less enjoyable with much more undue pressure. End note.

Someone was trapped and construction workers jumped in to save him. The rescuers got fined for not wearing the appropriate hard hats.

Businesses which have railings which are considered by the agencies to be a couple inches too long or a couple inches too short are forced to rip it all out and replace it, or be shut down.

Small companies go bankrupt just trying to hire lawyers to deal with the hundreds of pages of regulations.

Airbags are dangerous for small drivers, but the government forces you to have them. You can’t have an on and off switch. If you’re lucky, extensive applications and appeals processes will make it legal for you to not have to have one of these little bombs in your car.

Where does the government seeking our safety come to an end? Will exercise police come into our homes and make us do push-ups and run laps? Patrick Henry didn’t say ‘give me absolute safety or give me death.’

In his consumer reporting, he reported on statistically insignificant threats – activists have selfish agendas just like the businessman. The activists often want to get famous, to feel morally superior, and to scare people so they can raise money.

Risk takers built America, but today most of us are paralyzed by fear.

Note: We have been intimidated by the big state, and have seen examples of political targets being crushed. But of course, this doesn’t mean we can give in. End note.

 

Ch. 5 Scaring Ourselves to Death

News reporters exaggerate scary things going on because it makes news people want to watch. You’ll hear about a plane that crashes, but you won’t hear about the thousands that don’t.

In the summer of 2001 a bunch of news companies, not having much else to talk about, talked about sharks in the ocean so people were afraid to go in the ocean. But there’s the same number of sharks as usual.

If you get scared about minimal risks, you’re probably going to fall for bigger ones. If we focus on spending tons of money to make safer rubber duckies, we won’t have that money to take care of the real problems.

Driving is 180 times more dangerous than flying, but a plane crash will get way more news coverage. Because of the hype more people choose to drive, putting themselves in more danger. Normal stuff like hot water, stairs, and bunk beds kill more people than stuff you hear about in the news.

You can’t fear everything. If you’re focused on fearing the little silly stuff, you won’t be able to have a healthy fear of the real dangers of life.

Note: A flagship method of the left is to focus on minor problems. For example, they took the Iwo Jima Marine Corps memorial and replaced it with the soldiers holding up a tree rather than holding up the flag. They value animal rights over human rights. Everyone wants a battle to fight, and if you’re unable to detect real moral evils, you’ll focus on trivial minor ones. Dennis Prager in Still the Best Hope treats this subject well. End note.

Natural gas is invisible, highly flammable, toxic and odorless, and it kills people on a regular basis. But everybody uses it because it was adopted before everyone became overly panicked about everything.

People are terrified of nuclear energy because of the Chernobyl explosion which only killed 30 people and maybe some others down the road. But natural gas still kills way more people than that. Nuclear energy is new and mysterious, so we are scared of it. How can we innovate and improve in this culture of fear?

Just a century ago people would die at age 55. We are living longer now than ever, and a lot of that is because of this new stuff that you might be afraid of.

Note: Of course the ancients lived hundreds of years, but that’s beside the point here, as he’s pointing out that we’re living longer now than any other time in recent history. After the flood of Noah, lifespans dropped dramatically. Something likely changed in the atmosphere due to the catastrophic event. End note.

When people got scared about asbestos, they tore open walls and ripped it out of schools, never mind the fact that that safely contained asbestos was now being introduced into the air people would actually be encountering. And closing the schools to do all this work would result in the kids playing in the streets, which is a much greater risk as well.

The most common cancers are lung cancer from smoking and skin cancer from excessive sunbathing. Aside from this, cancer is going down. Everyone became terrified of chemicals. Protecting the environment is within the proper role of limited government, but this is often taken too far and gets in the way of freedom.

Note: There are plenty of dangerous chemicals and plenty of stupid things going on with the processed foods we eat. I’m a fan of making reasonable changes, but the key word there is ‘reasonable’. Often proposed laws in these matters are dramatic limits on freedom. End note.

Smoking is a dramatic health concern, yet smokers are often more concerned about getting brain cancer from using cell phones because that’s a new and exciting threat.

Taxes don’t go to what’s most important, they go to whatever the loudest advocates want.

Because people complain so much about AIDS, even though it doesn’t kill as many people as other things, it gets the most research out of anything.

Breast cancer also became a popular fight because people were accused of being anti-woman if they didn’t focus on this disease, even though it doesn’t affect very many people compared to other health dangers. Breast cancer is ninth on the list of diseases that kill people, and AIDS is all the way down at 18th. Heart disease is the biggest killer, but it’s not as popular.

Note: One reason heart disease is a less popular fight is because it is more obvious that heart disease is from the food we eat, and that’s a sacred cow no one dares touch. Soon it will become more common knowledge that various cancers are also from toxic foods. End note.

Note: AIDS of course is predominantly from the abomination of homosexuality, but saying that is politically incorrect, and many woke disciples have lined up to make sure you know that. Who would have thought that breaking God’s laws would result in health problems? Surely we can’t put religion into health! Oh yes we can! Satan is always about trying to make things irreligious, divorced from religion, but the truth is that everything is religious. God says he makes no distinction between temporal and spiritual commandments in the Doctrine & Covenants. End note.

 

Ch. 6 Junk Science & Junk Reporting

Journalists joke that some stories are too good to verify.

People think everything scientists say is flawless, but individual scientists are just as likely to come to dubious conclusions as the rest of us.

Note: And its not just individual scientists who it wrong, there are often popular scientific theories, like Darwin’s common ancestor, that are dead wrong, but which get a monopoly on tax dollars, and scientific journals refuse to publish anything against their pet theories. Not coincidentally, evolution theory is also staunchly anti-religious from its inception – there’s an agenda here. End note.

There’s no such thing as a child being affected from being born to a cocaine addicted mother. The idea of crack babies helped the Republican war on drugs and helped the Democrat mission to get more social programs.

Note: I believe there is evidence for various substances of the mother impacting the child, cocaine potentially being one of these. But Stossel could be right, that this was taken advantage of for ulterior motives. End note.

Lawyers can point to bogus science. To win court cases, all they have to do is convince the jury.

A ridiculously large number of 150,000 women a year dying of anorexia was going around. That’s triple the number killed in cars, and double those killed in the Vietnam War. The real number is more like 50. The huge number was feminist dogma.

Note: This is a surprisingly common phenomenon. Similar tactics are done for various claims of abuse. One of the tricks is to count a man stomping out of a room after an argument as abusive. Another is to claim that many American kids go hungry, just because parents reported in a survey that limited money influenced their shopping choices. Who doesn’t have limited money? Basic realities of scarcity are being politicized for government money by special interest groups. Crafty people know how to slant things to get the message they can use to milk us of cash. Dinesh D’Souza’s Stealing America book has many interesting points on this subject. End note.

Another totally false claim was that domestic abuse against women is the top killer, more than any other cause of death. Reporters like to believe feminist myths even when the numbers don’t make sense.

One popular report said that one in four children in America are hungry. It was based on a study that asked if people ever cut down their meal size, but it was spun to make it look like these kids were starving. Look around – America has a problem with obesity, not starvation.

We ignore people’s political agendas and trust their claims based on scanty evidence, not much different from superstitious people of the past!

 

Ch. 7 Government

Before the TSA (Transportation Security Agency) the airport security wasn’t that great, but they were meeting all the government expectations. So to increase security you didn’t have to get rid of the private companies, you just had to make higher rules and let companies compete to meet those standards. This is what many European countries have done. On 9/11 the US government failed to detect the plot and shut it down. There were people on terrorist watch lists going around from flight school to flight school looking for how to fly a bigger plane, but we did nothing. Several of the attackers were allowed into the US without visas.

No one can fire the government. There’s no competition. This is why performance by government agencies deteriorates. Yet when there’s a crisis, our automatic reaction is to bring in / grow the government to fix it.

The government is a little bit flexible. It’s supposed to respond to the people, but the elections are infrequent, and the accountability is minimal. The political system is so corrupt that 90% of people in office get put back into office again.

Note: It does not seem right that members of Congress can serve decade after decade. There is a movement to change this. No more career politicians. End note.

The two-party system does not give us many options. Imagine if shopping were that way, that you only get two choices, and maybe a third if it got enough signatures, and you only get to choose again every 4 years. The government gives one size fits all rules, and even when it does something clever, its rigidity makes that innovation quickly no longer applicable.

The private market does miracles every day. You can go to a foreign country where you don’t speak their language and they’ll give you a car if you give them a plastic card and sign a piece of paper. Yet the government can’t manage to count votes in Florida.

The French government gave everyone a computer, but those computers were quickly obsolete and this actually made France lag behind. When governments are in charge they can’t keep up with the hundreds of thousands of spontaneous innovations happening everywhere all the time.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs can’t keep safe the money they were supposed to save for Indians. Two billion were missing. Yet no one gets fired, no one gets demoted, no one gets named.

At the Pentagon accounting discrepancies totaled two trillion dollars. They’ve spent billions of dollars on things they can’t find. No private company would get away with this kind of bookkeeping – investors would be furious and the company would go bankrupt. The managers might go to jail. But the government doesn’t have to follow the same rules as private companies. When the government loses money they just demand we give them more, and we do.

Ch. 8 Welfare for the Rich

Next Section

The agriculture department gives farmers money to make sure that there’s enough wool to make soldiers uniforms. Today soldiers’ uniforms aren’t even made of wool, yet the government money assigned for that purpose still comes.

Mass transit doesn’t have to be done by the government. In New York the original mass transit was done by investors. But the government forcefully took this away from the builders when they wanted to raise the price on rides. When you compare all the money the government spends on mass transit compared to how much of it gets used for that purpose, the people would be much better off if the government just gave them some money to spend on travel.

Private ambulance companies get better ratings than public ones. The workers are happier to have more innovative resources and methods, and the taxpayers are happier to not have to pay so much in taxes.

Note: Horrific ambulance ride costs can also go down in a competitive market. Many now who could benefit from such rides deliberately avoid them, not wanting to pay thousands of dollars for the ride. And PS – the training manual for EMS personnel is inflated and hard to follow, clearly a government project. End note.

Competition makes us focus and brings out our best. Government eliminates competition, creates stagnation, and fails to innovate.

The Federal aviation system still uses vacuum tubes in its radar system. These are so primitive they were taken out of TV sets dozens of years ago. The government is bad at modernizing. Canada has privatized air control and it does the job well for about 1/3 the cost.

Thomas Jefferson said the natural progression of things is for government to gain, and liberty to yield.

Note: Most people today aren’t familiar or comfortable with the concept of liberty. They want safety guarantees, but that’s not what we are here for. Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined book does a great job of showing how we really don’t have liberty, and how we really could. End note.

America grew fastest when our government was small.

The Bible warns against big government and kings. But today government state and local taxes are about 40% of the economy. Americans now pay more in taxes than they do for food, clothing and shelter combined.

Note: Egyptian slavery of the Hebrews was only a fifth of their income, 20%. We are in bondage! End note.

The focus of government is no longer on securing individual liberty. Everyone gets money from the government. Everyone gets policed by the government at home and abroad. Since FDR, every president has expanded the government.

Note: Some say the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy began around the Hoover or FDR time. End note.

We need rule of law, but do we need so much of it? The Founding Fathers’ genius was to give us the concept and structure of limited government. It is one of the greatest philosophical achievements of humanity. It protects us while leaving us free to pursue our interests. Freedom is what makes many good and creative things possible.

When people build homes in risky places right by the ocean, there’s a government National Flood Insurance program guarantee that they will pay you for it if it gets destroyed. Why are we paying for rich people’s stupid choices? Private insurances didn’t want to insure homes built in such risky locations, so the government decided it would do it. You can get a quarter million dollars per house per flood with no limit to the number of claims, and the government’s insurance premiums on this are dirt cheap.

American farmer subsidies from the government out compete small farmers around the world, hurting those small farmers.

Note: Wherever there is a government subsidy, someone suffers. For example – since the government gives student loan money to pay schools, schools raise their prices deliberately above what students can afford on their own. Why would schools not raise prices if suddenly way more money was available to them? A similar racket exists in the government-mandated insurance world. To charge a lower price would mean getting less money, because the government will just pay for the bigger price. Thomas Sowell’s Inside American Education book goes into detail on this and other government education boondoggles. End note.

Food is important, but just because something’s important doesn’t mean the government needs to pay for it.

Note: We make up fake rights all the time. People think anything a person needs is now a right, and what they mean by that is that the government should give it to them whether they want to work for it or not. This flies in the face of reason and basic economics. Soon we will be slaves if we keep this up (and in many ways we already are). We have always had limited resources. And who is going to work to provide for those who won’t work? Is it fair to them? When government gets involved, setting prices and the like, everything becomes unfair and unsustainable. The Bible teaching gives us wisdom, that those who won’t work won’t eat. That’s life. Work is life. No work, no life. There’s no magic wand to change that. End note.

Illegal bribery occurs via “contributions.”

Subsidies are given to prosperous American companies who sell goods overseas. Justifications are made by the politicians for just about anything. They say it’ll be good for America to have products sold overseas. Okay, that’ll be good for America, but they don’t need taxpayers to help them do it.

Politicians talk people into paying for sports stadiums by taxes, but studies show these stadiums never bring in as much as they cost.

Eminent domain, where the government can have someone move and take their property if it’s in the way of a major road etc., is now extended to helping private businesses.

 

Ch. 9 The Trouble with Lawyers

Lawsuits should be treated like a necessary evil, like nuclear weapons. We shouldn’t be using them all the time. Just one lawsuit can ruin your life. Even if you win, it can take all your time and money. For every personal lawsuit that helps someone, it hurts five. Our legal system makes litigation too inviting. Now anything new is a liability, and it’s safer not to try. Lawyers could have been helping the good guys against the bad guys, but now they have become the bullies. By attacking the innovators, lawyers are making America worse and less safe. Even when companies are in the right, they pay off lawyers who threaten them to avoid the legal hassle. Lawyers crush entrepreneurs and kill jobs. They sue people for potentially minor risks and bankrupt the companies thereby. Companies often buy the lawyers off. We call it settling. Lawyers make the prices for everything go up, making business owners jump through many more hoops, and the costs of doing that are passed on to the consumers.

Note: If you need a lawyer to make a business work, rest assured corruption exists in that industry. So basically everything now is corrupt. The purpose of lawyers is to scam and avoid getting scammed. No one can explain to me why we have to pay a lawyer for a will, a divorce, or other basic transactions involving practically uniform documentation. The law profession has heaped up mountains of rules, and if you break them, you’re in trouble. Why the trouble? Not because you did something inherently bad, but because you did something they arbitrarily made a rule against to protect their craft. It’s a good ol’ boys club racket. In this tumultuous climate we do need good lawyers to protect us from the bad ones, but it’s a frightful situation all around, feeding on the fear of the people. End note.

Girls’ camps have eliminated horseback riding in fear of lawsuits. Fewer people are volunteering to be leaders of Boy Scouts for fear of lawyers. Many are afraid to coach little leagues for fear of lawsuits. When an airline fires a pilot for being drunk, they don’t say anything about it to cover themselves from a lawsuit. So you have a bad guy who’s going to just go get another job and do the same thing. Due to fear of lawsuits the vaccine industry is limited to five companies.

We don’t read warning labels anymore because they’re all so full of nonsensical legal jargon. A candle contains a warning label that there is fire, do not eat. A medicine for sleep warns that it may cause drowsiness. A step ladder comes with over 40 instructions. This is verbal pollution (from excessive lawyerism and litigationism) and we respond to it by ignoring it.

The court system is a racket for both sides. The winner and the loser both pay tons of money. The lawyers on both sides are happy. After fighting in court they both shake hands and go to the bank. It takes a long time to get the money you win, and when you do, the lawyers take most of it. Lawyers pick a target and keep suing until they win, and they almost always win eventually.

Note: Charles Dickens in Great Expectations shows the drama of a family who hopes across generations to win a high stakes court case. Once they finally do, all the winnings have been used up in legal fees. A young man who staked his life’s vision on winning that case falls over dead in shock. End note.

Some lawyers make $100,000 an hour. They rarely tell how much they make, claiming it’s a secret.

The Democratic party’s biggest supporters now are trial lawyers.

The American Disabilities Act has become a big money game for lawyers; they sue people who don’t post a handicap sign. A company who builds and repairs wheelchairs were themselves in wheelchairs and didn’t have a sign for handicap parking – they got sued.

Many countries have something called ‘loser pay.’ It allows people who are in the right to defend themselves and fight back without getting hit with huge costs. Lawyers say that the loser pay system would discourage some good lawsuits, but that’s okay because good lawsuits are being taken way too far. It’s not just England that does the loser pay system – it’s every civilized country in the world except America. America is the one who has the strange rule of favoring the lawyers.

A General Mills company accidentally used a wrong unapproved chemical. No one was hurt. They were sued to high heaven.

Most large companies pay settlements because it’s cheaper to pay that than to fight, and the costs are passed on to the consumers. Note: Bad press is another threat associated with the lawsuit threats. End note.

Why do lawyers have to charge so much for a divorce or a will? It’s just a piece of paper nearly identical to all the other ones they do. When there’s money to be made, lawyers insist on tons of due process. They waste time obsessing about everything. There’s less competition in law because lawyers ban outsiders. They prosecute competition, calling it ‘unauthorized practice of law.’ Criminals have the right to a speedy trial, but most of where lawyers make their money is civil trials, and those are dragged out for a long time to make the lawyers more money.

Lawyers don’t have an obligation to truth, they have an obligation to money. It’s extortion coupled with pompous ceremony. Judges wear robes and we call them honorable whether they are or not, and many put the now useless word Esquire after their name. The pompous rituals make it seem like there’s magic to the law, making it seem like only they can do it.

The legal system encourages people not to do business.

Trial lawyers practice fighting every day. They might not be right, but they know how to win.

Next Section

 

Ch. 10 The Left Takes Notice

 

In liberal cities that use the word ‘conservative’ the same way they use the word ‘child-molester.’ They all agree conservatives are oppressive terrible things who are indifferent to the suffering of the poor. Leftist thinking is simply the culture we live in.

A story recently reported the North Pole turning into water. Ten days later the times magazine apologized, saying that what was happening was a normal cyclical condition. But it didn’t matter, by then the story had spread everywhere. News agencies and television all around the world were talking about it.

Stossel is not a conservative, he is a libertarian. But compared to the radical left, many of his views are quite conservative. The term classical liberal meant those who seek freedom but doesn’t anymore.

20 million people watched Stossel’s show criticizing the government, and the only thing that the liberal media could say about it was that it was terrible. The left was on his side when he criticized businesses, but when he began to criticize the government, they came after him. The left assumes that businessmen are evil and that the government and lawyers are doing the Lord’s work. The left mocks basic free enterprise principles.

Almost all economists agree that rent controls cause housing shortages.

FEMINISM:

In 1995 saying boys and girls are different became controversial. At first Stossel went along with the agenda that differences in boys and girls are all just made by society, but then he had kids and saw he was completely wrong. Now science vindicates the fact that there are many inherent differences in boys and girls. For example, men’s brains are better at remembering directions and women’s brains are better at remembering details. Boys who aren’t allowed to use guns end up shooting each other with carrots. Girls draw faces on baseballs and talk a lot. Boys are extra physically active.

Feminists say research about differences in men and women shouldn’t even be done. Gloria Steinem wouldn’t admit to any inherent differences in men and women. She said it’s all sexist parenting that makes boys and girls different. She told Stossel, “we badly need to raise our boys more like our girls.” Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred also denounced the topic of differences between boys and girls. She says talking about it is an attack, and was angry.

Note: Rather than defend their position logically they resort to name calling and emotion when you point out the error of their dogma. End note.

Sure the women’s movement has brought us some good things like allowing women more career choices and allowing men more parenting. But the equality feminists have become so dominant in the universities and media that they think they have the right to demand that gender differences shouldn’t even be discussed. Gloria Steinem said it’s crazy anti-America thinking to do research about the differences between men and women. What’s truly un-American is the censorship of thought police like Steinem.

Someone pointed out that the female firefighters have to drag someone out of a building whereas the males could carry them. Stossel talked to Gloria Steinem about this, and she made the absurd response that it’s better to be dragged because there’s less smoke down there, and that male firefighters are probably killing people carrying them out at that height.

Note: Nevermind the fact that dragging is slower and more damaging than carrying. How can anyone take radical feminists seriously? End note.

FOOD:

There are certain procedures for getting rid of bacteria from cow manure on food, but many organic farmers don’t take those necessary steps. And organic foods can have more bacteria.

Things like spring lettuce in a bag have sewage on them. It’s true that meat is more likely to be contaminated than produce but the foods advertised as organic are still dangerous. Many more people die from bacteria than from pesticides. So focus on the bacteria.

Organic farming uses more land because they need more space since much of their crop is lost to weeds and pests.

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Ch. 11 It’s Not My Fault! (Victims)

Compensating victims creates an incentive for people to be victims. Yes, suing and getting compensation has its proper place but many of us are tempted to frame everything in the perspective of victimhood. Many people get out of trouble by claiming victimhood. Like saying if you’re caught driving drunk that you’re a victim of alcoholism.

America wasn’t founded and built by people who wanted handouts, but by people who wanted government to leave them alone.

The Americans with disabilities act supposedly is protecting 43 million Americans. This implies that one in six people is disabled. The definition of disability is being lost and turned into a political money game. The vague definition allows lawyers to mess around and get lots of money. Some say being stupid or fat is a disability. Disability laws have actually made it harder for disabled people to find work because employers know that hiring a disabled person, thanks to all the new laws, is a giant potential lawsuit waiting to happen. There are too many unpredictable loopholes and rules to want to even mess with the whole system that makes it impossible to fire a disabled person.

New laws are making more and more people special classes to be protected by the government.

Note: Making new protected classes is a key strategy of the left. This is their constituency, how they get more votes, more power, and more of your money. Prager in Still the Best Hope treats this well. End note.

One crazy example of a new protected class is addiction. Many people get checks from the government because of their disability of being addicted to drugs. Stossel spoke to many addicts who admitted they just like doing drugs and they like getting checks from the government. Labeling addiction as disease shifts the responsibility away from the individual. The addict said that they just use the government checks to get high and to buy drugs to sell.

Note: We are sensitive to the nightmare addiction can become, but our sensitivity must not stop us from having a tougher stance. Surely our society is in moral decay when we think drug addiction is a reason to shovel out perpetual cash to someone. End note.

Social security disability check recipients don’t bother getting a job because they would lose their check. The system encourages people to act like victims. The idea is growing in America that people don’t have to take responsibility for their own actions because the government will always be there to pick up the pieces. Now everyone has rights, and no one has responsibilities.

Note: It’s a trap! They turn you into a slave by giving you a little reward. Something for nothing. It pales in comparison to what you could do without caps on your savings, but few will choose to budget and save more carefully, and merely continue on in the money trap, always borderline impoverished, but not without bread and circuses. End note.

There are many loosely defined diseases that qualify people for government money. One of them is back pain. Many doctors have demonstrated that in many cases back pain can be from psychological rather than physical causes. The pain is real but what’s going on emotionally is what causes it. Many people who actually have bulging discs, etc., don’t have back pain. To cope with stress, our brain redirects blood flow to certain areas of the body which then increases pain in those areas. That pain distracts our minds from the unacceptable feelings. Much of this pain would go away if we ignored it and focused on other things, including resuming physical activity. See the book, “Healing Back Pain”, by Dr Sarno.

Ch. 12 What About the Poor?

 

LBJ’s War on Poverty showed that the government spending tons of money isn’t the problem.

There are so many overlapping programs of government welfare for poverty that much of the money has now disappeared.

Government welfare recipients adopt the belief that they have the right to a monthly check.

When welfare reform has happened, it has had positive results, getting many people off of welfare and back into the workforce. Opportunity abounds for those who are willing to work.

Children of immigrants often earn more than the average American because they have a work ethic.

In New York they introduced an idea called Workfare where recipients of government welfare money had to work. The people revolted calling it slavery and had their nice little riots saying things like, “Hey hey, ho ho, Workfare has got to go.” But no one’s making anyone participate in the Workfare program. They could walk away and get a job whenever they want. So when they complain that the jobs of Workfare are menial, it’s them who’s choosing to participate in the program. Those on the welfare system refuse to take minimum wage jobs thinking that they couldn’t afford to live on minimum wage. It’s true that first jobs may not pay well – they are the first rung on the ladder of opportunity. They teach you how to show up on time, how to work hard, how to do a good job, follow instructions and handle responsibility. They give people the self-respect that work alone brings. Then the workers can move into better jobs. There are many stories of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up.

If you’re looking for work, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for excuses and evidence of racism and depression, you’ll find it. Do something instead of whining.

People who refuse to get a minimum wage job thinking it won’t pay the bills and prefer welfare will never climb out of their poverty. The welfare system does not foster self-reliance. There are people who are generationally on the welfare system.

Note: Note: The Lord’s system of charity for the poor is not to give endless handouts, but to give rare crisis financial support, and to focus on training and work opportunities. The Workfare idea of having to work to get money in a welfare system is a correct principle. End note.

Government housing projects are often in disrepair and full of crime. One government apartment complex became abandoned due to the high drug use. But then a private owner came in and established a healthy culture. Then he even hired someone to give private karate lessons.  It again became a place where children could play. Under private management the message was sent that they cared about the dignity of the housing and then everything changed.

Note: When there’s no real ownership and minimal accountability, things fall apart. End note.

In one area convicts got together and helped each other. A private association was formed. They ran businesses, etc., and do very well. Of course the government tried to smother the program with red tape. Someone commented that if Jesus Christ wanted to start Christianity today, he wouldn’t be able to do it because the government would say, ‘You need a psychiatrist and a social worker, etc. before you’ll be allowed to do anything.’

Ch. 13: Greed or Ambition?

 

Capitalism lets people get rich no matter what color they are etc. Sure, some people will get richer than others, and that’s okay. The alternative is a system where everyone stays poor.

Note: Dinesh D’Souza in Stealing America points out that the people who make the rich rich are the consumers. He uses the example of a popular book author. The people want the book so they all pay the author. Then the author’s net worth has gone up by many times, and those who bought the book have that much less money. So in capitalism it’s not by oppression that the rich get rich, it’s by voluntary exchange, which rewards innovation. D’Souza says those who are always looking out for what others want are capitalists and the clergy. End note.

President Bill Clinton wanted a third option between socialism and capitalism. Someone who had experience with communism heard about this and commented that the third way is the fastest way to the third world. You’re either free or not free. Every regulation throws sand in the gears of the economic engine. The regulations seem like they’ll be helpful, but they have the unintended consequence of making employers afraid to hire people and making people afraid to start businesses. Many people are now leaving America to go to more economically free areas.

You know you’re living in a good country when the main problem is getting too fat. A billion people in the world are trying to live on a dollar a day. But in America, even 75% of the poor own TVs and cars. Nearly half of America’s poor own a house.

The thing that makes America succeed is not its natural resources. It’s not the democracy. It’s not the people. It’s economic freedom. India has plenty of natural resources and democracy, yet it is much poorer than America. Some blame it on overpopulation, yet it has the same population density as New Jersey. The reality is that they have less economic freedom. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per capita as India and no natural resources, yet they are not poor like India. Again it’s because they have economic freedom. Hong Kong thrived because its rulers sat around and didn’t do much. Without the crutch of government welfare, more people in Hong Kong are inspired to create things. Without high taxation they get to keep more of what they make. Singapore is oppressive in lots of ways but they do have economic freedom, so they’ve climbed out of poverty really fast as well. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite the success of free America and free Hong Kong, many places around the world still put many restraints on economic freedom. A leader in Calcutta India speaking to Stossel insisted that socialism works better, claiming it was merely his implementation of it that was failing. Anyone paying attention to modern history can see that economic freedom works!

Rule of law is also needed for a society to prosper. People need to be protected from theft if they are to do business. 94 countries are poor because there’s not enough law enforcement to protect from theft. Limited government is needed by everyone, especially the poor.

Next Section

In the movies, the person most likely to be portrayed as a murderer or destroyer of the environment is a businessman.

But yes, those who just try to get ahead by stepping on the heads of others do deserve condemnation.

Greed is having more than you deserve, but who’s to decide what you deserve? Ask anyone if they’ve ever turned down a pay raise.

Note: Dinesh D’Souza in Stealing America points out how capitalism takes the human nature of greed and puts it in a proper restraint, basing earnings on serving the customer rather than theft. He makes a similar analogy for marriage, that marriage controls lust (the desire for sex) in a healthy environment, channeling it into a relationship more likely to create lasting attachment, stability, and children. End note.

Innovators and leaders do get paid more, but it’s for a reason. They are responsible for the growth that brings in massive amounts of income for many people.

Note: Entrepreneurs take many risks that workers do not, and have a right to more of the profits. Ben Shapiro gives a brilliant brief explanation of this in this video: Socialist Tells Ben Shapiro: Workers Should Own the Means of Production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xq-q6a9tCM End note.

Sectors of the economy that are motivated by what could be called greed, run smoothly. Whereas the sectors run by selfless motives don’t run well. Not much would get done if we all depended on human kindness. Greed gets people to cooperate. In the free market you don’t have to care about your fellow man, but you do have to serve him.

Government Red Cross non-profit lifeguards perform lower than private company lifeguards. Some people say, ‘Don’t trust something that important to a private company that might cut corners.’ But the reality is that the private companies outdo the government all the time. Over a thousand pools have switched from Red Cross to private lifeguards. Making profit motivates an organization to save lives.

Some think that money is not made, it’s just transferred. This isn’t correct. Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. When someone gets a billion dollars, it doesn’t mean everyone else has a billion less. Entrepreneurs get rich by making the pie bigger. They find the world new ways of saving time and money.

The type of greed that does hurt the poor is when government programs take money and use it poorly. In voluntary capitalism everyone wins unless someone cheats. To run a successful business year after year, businessman have to be honest. They must price their products competitively. They must do a host of consumer friendly things better than their competitors. In this sense, greed is a good thing.

Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Rockefeller were called “robber barons” but they were neither robbers nor barons – they were not born into wealth, and they didn’t steal. Vanderbilt invented ways to make travel easier. It was competing businessmen that persuaded the newspapers to depict him as someone who hurts the poor. Rockefeller was labeled as a monopolist in the oil industry, but he wasn’t – there were competitors. No one was forced to buy his oil, people were enticed to do so because he sold it for less. He found cheaper ways to get oil from the ground to the gas pump, and his success is what his competitors hated about him. And he saved the whales because he decreased the need for whale blubber by decreasing the cost of kerosene and gasoline. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller also gave great sums to charity.

Stossel gives about 10% of his money to charity.

People who have the skills to build companies & new products should invest their resources on those things more than just giving their resources away.

Note: Everyone should give some of their resources away, and particularly by forming families they are responsible and donating to church, but yes, a person can do great good by magnifying his talents. The Lord has a parable about the importance of magnifying one’s talents. End note.

Ch. 14 Owning Your Body

 

Dwarf tossing is a party sport in some parts of the world. Some dwarves want the freedom to be tossed to make money. In a world where athletes wreck their bodies for money, the dwarves should also be able to choose for themselves. In the political world, the activist winners get to tell everyone else what to do.

In much of the Islamic world homosexuality is punished by death. In America sexuality of any kind is tolerated as long as you don’t get in other people’s faces about it. A lot of states still have laws against fornication and adultery, though they are not enforced. In 2003 a Georgia law against sodomy was overturned. (Note: Of course in 2015 the Obama administration made homosexuality a legal form of marriage on a federal level, much to the dismay of religious America. End note.)

Note: It is true that the government of Islam (Sharia Law) is overly strict and penalizing, like stoning a woman for not covering her face. But homosexuality should not be tolerated in a civil society. It is proper for people to elect a righteous government which does not tolerate theft, lying, murder, sodomy, fornication, and other crimes against nature and nature’s God. End note.

Note: Stossel suggests that we should legalize things like prostitution and pornography. That’s not right. It is best when we obey God’s laws. Society without God God’s law will not last long. It may not be understood by those who claim to just be acting on reason, but God’s ways are higher than our ways. The truth is that many people are hurt, especially children, when sexual debauchery is allowed. And the act of sexuality is inherently different from other physical achievements or activities. It is a sacred sacrament. On a similar note, this is why it is corrupt for churches to charge money for sacraments. It was wrong for the Catholic Church to sell indulgences. That’s not how God works. There is a proper function of government in blocking legitimately evil deeds. Conservatives recognize this more than libertarians. End note.

Someone Stossel interviewed was talking to the point about how some say you can’t legislate morality but that we actually do legislate morality frequently in government. Stossel disagrees with him.

Note: I agree with the man who said we do legislate morality. Politics are actually quite closely tied to morality and religion. This is why most people can’t handle talking about religion or politics. This is why parents are so essential, because they’re basically the only people brave enough to teach these things to children. End note.

Note: Stossel says sex is not a direct threat to someone but that’s not the whole picture. It leads to murder from abortion. It leads to divorce and children being raised outside of marriage. It leads to disease and premature death. It leads to corruption of society. It leads to societal birth rates dropping below the reproduction level. The list goes on and on. But the most important thing is God has made the rules, and we accept or reject them to our peril. End note.

Note: It is important here to discuss plural marriage. God has sanctioned this system at times so we know that it is sometimes morally permissible. In the 1800s the Latter-day Saints were commanded to practice plural marriage, and it was wrong for the government to force them not to. Biblical plural marriage (as in a man having several wives) actually has many of the opposite effects of sexual deviation. Widows are taken care of. The children have a wholesome place to be raised. The poor are taken into families where they have a meaning important roles. The Latter-day Saints don’t practice plural marriage today because it’s strictly governed by God’s priesthood and the direction came to discontinue the practice in part due to the harsh political climate, but it is clear to see when one begins to do a more than perfunctory review of it why God has sanctioned this system in ancient and modern history. Many places around the world still practice polygamy, such as Africa and the Arab world. And many report this system being beneficial for families. So here I would agree with Stossel that the government should not legislate against these relationships. But there is an inherent difference between this and clear immoral sexuality. It was peculiar indeed when the gay rights crowd and the polygamy crowd agreed on something! Of course polygamy is the elephant in the sexual rights movement room that will never be recognized by the corrupted United States government, it has too much potential to be something that actually does good in the world. End note.

Stossel says laws in the past which were against adultery didn’t stop adultery from happening any more than today’s laws, and laws against drugs and prostitution don’t stop those from being used. There’s a group that lobbies for legalization and protection of prostitutes called “Coyote” which stands for “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics”.

Note: I disagree that immorality should be legal just because it is hard to enforce. Society should at least provide some guideposts to people about what a good life looks like. Adultery and drugs are decaying influences on society and attempts should be made to limit their prevalence, even if not to entirely eradicate them. Our ethics may be old and tired, but they have kept us safe through many challenges, and will continue to do so if we allow them. End note.

Stossel says vices are part of life and making it illegal drives it underground and makes it more dangerous.

Note: Even if something goes underground, even if we can’t tax it, even if it becomes something more enticing to rebels, a good society is one that makes it easy to be good, and a bad society is one that makes it easy to be bad. Making a vice of a most serious nature legal is morally wrong, even if you can’t now see the bigger picture of the net negative impact it will have on society. End note.

Stossel points out that it’s legal for men to go into the boxing ring and meet each other up for entertainment, but it’s not legal for a woman to give sexual pleasure for financial profit.

Note: Of course this goes against the whole morality of decent society. It destroys the family. It doesn’t put people in a position to have a family and maintain a family. It goes against many commandments and it’s just so corrupt it’s unbelievable that people would draw a parallel between sports and sex. The erosion of sex has been going on for decades now. It was never meant to be mere recreation or entertainment. It was meant to be the fountain of life, the symbol of marital unity, the glue that holds together marriage, and the most sacred element of life. But now people fail to understand sacred space – everything has become profane. Profane means open to the public, sacred means reserved for vary specific conditions. Societies self-destruct when they take these things lightly, and they incur the wrath of God. End note.

Note: Modern feminists, instead of rebuking unfaithful men, decided they get the right to be unfaithful as well. If there’s people doing stupid things, why does that justify doing more stupid things? Rather, call for reformation. Bring them up, don’t go down to their level. End note.

Note: Ultimately when the American public demands stupid things they will make them legal. But acting to make some things officially illegal does show that there is a conservative voice. There is a voice of reason and morality. End note.

Note: Stossel points out the dramatic amount of money being spent on the drug war, and yes, this is of course wasteful. But the solution isn’t to let people do drugs and make drugs a convenient part of life. The solution is to change the method of the drug war; to execute big drug dealers and stop playing around with all this. Drug dealers know that there are places that take drug crime use seriously, and they don’t mess with those places. Cleon Skousen as chief of police of Salt Lake City cracked down on drugs and virtually eliminated the problem. But it was the leftists who said he was being too strict, got him fired, then all the drugs and prostitutes and homeless started showing up again. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about how we’re locking up in jail more people for drug use than for other serious crimes. But at the end of the day, as many people want to do crimes, that’s how many people we’re going to lock up. And again there needs to be more serious law enforcement, not less, to make real deterrence. As Stossel points out, most people arrested on drug charges are quickly released. Is this really doing anything to deter the deadly drug use? End note.

Note: Stossel says drug crimes aren’t inherently bad, they are just criminal because we have labeled them that way,. and that most drugs just make people stupid or sleepy. But when the person becomes stupid they do stupid things. Dangerous things. So no, it’s not just arbitrary illegality. Most domestic abuse cases involve drugs, etc. Drug users are more likely to neglect their children, more likely to fail at basic civic responsibility, more likely to act unethically in many fields. Drugs corrode society, and we don’t want them here. The least we can do is heavily punish criminals when drugs were also a part of their crime. Toughen up drunk driving laws, etc. This is a solution Joel Skousen suggests. But I don’t think that cuts it. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about how dangerous Columbia is in terms of murders and kidnapping. He talks about how Columbia grows cocaine for America. But to me this is evidence that the drug use there is leading to more violence and child abuse and it’s not just because there’s laws against drugs in America.Make it legal in America and we will get a society that looks more like Columbia. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about people who sell drugs making a lot of money in America and having the nicest cars and how it doesn’t discourage people from working normal jobs when the role models and the rich people are criminals. But I think Stossel’s approach to this is backwards because you legalize something that doesn’t make it morally good. There are things you can do that are illegal that are still immoral. So we’re still encouraging immoral behavior, even if you make something legal. Something being legal or illegal doesn’t determine it’s morality. I think Stossel’s weak stance on the reality of God and natural moral law could be impacting his judgment on this and similar topics. The point of law is to encourage good sound morality. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about drug money making very profitable gangs, how alcohol prohibition made Al Capone, and how the drug money can even fund terrorists. But people are always going to take advantage of money from corruption. If you make bad things legal, then you’d have people parading as making money on these things while at the same time claiming to be good moral people and our society would no longer have a clear sense of good versus evil. People should not be taught to make a career out of vice, and legalizing vice would do that to an even greater extent than what you see with the gangs. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about how we can’t enforce everything. For example, we can’t have exercise police come in our home and make us run laps and do push-ups. But this is a different category. Yes, there are some things making us unhealthy and it might be the role of the government to step in and ban more of those things as they have done in Europe. Just because we’re asking for some inherently immoral things to be illegal, doesn’t mean we’re asking for a complete micromanaging police state. We’re just saying a few big hitters like immorality and drugs should be illegal. Making very immoral things illegal is justified due to their potent addictive destructive nature. End note.

Stossel says to hold people accountable for what they do, not for what they put in their bodies. He says it’s ironic that people want to outlaw drugs but not alcohol. And someone responded by saying people use alcohol for the taste, not to get high. Stossel quickly caught them in this because of course people use alcohol to get high/drunk.

Note: This is an oversimplification of the situation. Drug use creates a culture of irresponsible sickly and resentful people who rely on the government and don’t value freedom. That’s not what America stands for. We aren’t a police state, but we also aren’t a stupid state. Furthermore, you can’t equate drugs and alcohol. Brewing up a large batch of meth is like making a nuclear bomb, destroying the lives of all it touches. No one would advocate allowing people to make nukes in their garages. We don’t even allow people to make smaller bombs. We don’t even allow people to own functional tanks. We must recognize heavy drugs as lethal weapons, mass killers. Alcohol addiction can get bad but it’s on a whole different level compared to heavy drugs. In our legal system, we must recognize differences in kinds. Not all substances are created equal. The more dangerous things need more limitations. End note.

Note: Stossel says making drugs illegal means basically we should make bad movies, bad art, bad music illegal. First, we can’t equate lethal drugs to bad media. However, there is a case to be made for also making more limits on media when it comes to grotesque and inhumane productions. As a democratic people we can at least vote to limit the absurdities being done in the name of art. Pornographic ‘art’, movies with extreme horror gore and immorality, these are not good for society, and there used to be laws prohibiting these things. It is strange that anyone would even want to make them, much less consume them. Yes, there’s freedom of speech and expression. But what happens when people use those freedoms wrongfully and send lethal satanic messages that lead people to immorality? There are other fields in which we limit speech. Like if someone yells ‘fire’ in a building, or someone incites violence. Therefore, we already understand that speech which is inherently very dangerous should be limited. And if we can recognize the danger of a lot of this in popular media, we should not tolerate it as a society. It’s time we ask ourselves how long we want a society with epidemics of suicide, violence, and ignorance. When will we have a revival, and become what America used to be? End note.

Note: Stossel says a person should be able to do dangerous drugs because it’s their own  body. There’s some truth to this, but also falsehood. For one, Christ has bought us with a price and we are not our own. For two, when it comes to the very dangerous things, responsible adults of society have a duty to help limit dangerous things for the benefit of the rising generation. We must uphold the moral fabric of society. End note.

Note: Stossel talks about having the option to end your life via euthanasia (medically assisted suicide). But this is another big pitfall. It would tear down the moral fabric of society if we normalized suicide. Life is not ours to give or to take. It is God’s domain. It is cowardice to seek to end our life in our own time tables. It is pagan and it is not the way of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization. Soon we would have doctors pressuring people toward death when they have a bad day, as has been happening in Europe. Sorrow is a normal part of life. Sickness is a normal part of life. Suffering is the great school of humanity. And helping those who suffer is what brings out the best in us, and teaches us life’s most important lessons. We play god when we think we know how better than He concerning the terminating of life. Another point along these lines that people like Stossel would not understand is abortion. Where there is life, we do not have moral permission to terminate it. We only kill when one has murdered, indeed, the Bible says for murder there must be no substitute punishment other than to take the murderer’s life (to prevent further murder and to have justice). War is a necessary evil to shut down those who would seek to destroy humanity. But the innocent baby can never be terminated justly. Nor should we seek to eliminate our elderly and sick, though the movement to do so is appallingly alive and well today as it was in the 20th century. Rather, we must communicate that life has great value. It is a crime against humanity to normalize or assist with suicide. Many are pushing for ending the use of the phrase ‘commit suicide,’ as though it were not a horrifying crime. Suicide is a crime against god, a crime against he self, a crime against loved ones, and a crime against the rising generation who thereby learns that life is cheap. Suicide is murder, let’s not call for the legalization of murder. Let’s not go in the direction of the government deciding about who needs to live and who needs to die. It’ll be like Hitler, who wanted to and did kill the sick and the aged and the ‘unfavored races.’ You may think race is protected today, but they always come up with some excuse or another. End note.

Stossel says social peer pressure is more powerful than political laws to deter bad behavior. Note: Again, there’s some truth to that. But there’s also the basic point of law in society that when people are being immoral, they need more laws to govern them.

These days women are accusing men of rape when they have consensual drunk sex. Stossel went to talk to the people involved in one of these cases and radicals on the school campus shouted, “Stop sexual violence,” and wouldn’t let him talk. They said they don’t have to prove anything. They just have to say if it’s likely, then kick him out. Stossel asked them to clarify the definition of rape because when he was growing up that meant actual force. As soon as he said that, they all shouted and wouldn’t let him talk anymore. The totalitarian left insists that the other point of view not even be heard.

Note: A good point to be made here is that these topics should be debated. After debate, people can vote on them and make legally binding decisions. For example, the people can decide that they don’t want certain immoral television programs, or certain immoral music, or certain immoral drugs, or certain immoral sexual activities to be allowed, etc. We express our will through the laws of our society. It is proper, even necessary, for us to vote according to our conscience. Let the people speak. Let them debate, and let them make choices which are legally binding. End note.

Some call Stossel a woman hater because he has pointed out the differences between men and women.

Stossel recognizes that some free speech is not allowed. Like inciting direct violence and lawless action. Some people want to outlaw all criticism as offensive speech, but we must allow criticism.

Private companies can have rules where they will fire someone if they criticize certain things. But the problem is that the laws these days and politics of the left have frightened schools and other companies into passing suffocatingly restrictive speech rules. Some say there’s a new commandment in America, thou shalt not hurt others with words. It’s a noble idea to create a kinder, more civil society, but placing strict limits on speech is dangerous. You don’t have the right to not have your feelings hurt. But in today’s legal climate, people with disabilities (and other every-growing protected classes) have the right to not have their feelings hurt. If you accept this logic, the censorship will never end.

Workers now sue bosses because a co-worker told a dirty joke. Companies make flirting illegal. States are pressured to change Columbus Day into Indigenous People’s Day. Speech codes have put many organizations in fear of being sued. For the longest time the workplace has always been a place to find love, but now companies are banning all dating and flirting and making people sign weird contracts in this regard. The government is setting up a nationwide orthodoxy telling us detailed lists of what we can and can’t do. In work trainings these days you’re told you can’t do the most basic human interaction like touching someone on the shoulder or complementing someone.

Note: It’s almost like marriage isn’t part of the agenda for Satan’s inverted plan. End note.

 

Ch. 15 Free Speech

Speech police say that our words are bullets. But for the sake of freedom, we need to make the distinction between words and bullets!

The party that loses a lawsuit should pay the other side’s costs. This would prevent lawsuit abuse. The losing lawyer should pay, too, if the client is poor. Lawyers say that loser pay would deny some people access to the courtroom, but it works well enough in the rest of the world. Would you like people to have access to missiles because they are destructive? Lawsuits are also destructive. Limit them.

Some companies, like vaccine makers, are given exemption from the law. This does not make us equal under the law.

We must adjust to risk ourselves, rather than expecting the government to do it.

Note: There’s a lot of truth to that. But the government does have a role in blocking things that are inherently immoral. For a fully free society, the people must operate on conscience. This is why the US Founding Fathers said our government is wholly unsuitable for non-religious people. End note.

Passing regulations have unintended negative consequences so when you want to pass a new regulation get rid of two old ones first.

Stossel says government should set basic rules for safety, keep the peace, then leave people alone.

Note: This is mostly true, but who decides what is basic safety? The people, of course, get to vote and decide. For example, whether they want legal drugs, legal prostitution, and other controversial things. It’ll be put to vote. The Book of Mormon says that most of the time, the voice of the people will choose that which is just, and  when they don’t, they are ripe for destruction. So ultimately, God has a safety valve built in such that when people do choose to make immorality and vice legal and normalized, the clock starts ticking for them to be shut down. It is the job of saints to speak against vices of a serious nature, even when the majority seeks to normalize them. End note.

Note: For example, if neither leading candidate for president is a good pick you can vote for someone else even when you know they won’t win but because it’s the right thing to do. At least you can say ‘I didn’t vote for this.’ I don’t say that is the right path in every situation, one rarely finds a perfect candidate, but it is an important principle to remember if you find yourself in a situation where there are serious issues on both sides like theft immorality and so forth. End note.

Science thrives in the US because no one authority has the right to decide what is permissible.

Note: America has been known as the nation of inventors but that is changing. Other countries now are inventing more than the us. And tyrannical academic boards insisting on dogmas of modern science, such as Evolution Theory, are now squashing the truth and suppressing her. End note.

America isn’t run by the president. It is run by millions of people making choices every day. Most of the best of life has nothing to do with government like falling in love, worshiping, creating things, and making families work. For the most part, the country runs itself. It’s free markets and free minds that innovate, not government!