I've never read the works of Ayn Rand and in general never held much interested in the Libritarian political ideaology. While I try to be politically open-minded, everytime I look at libritarian candiates and their platforms in the newspaper....words seemd to appear stamped over their faces. Words like "gun-nut", "bigot", and "out-of-touch".
So this past Saturday I found myself quite surprised to have unwittingly sat down to read a book that was stating Liberitarian values that made some sense. This occurred when I decided to browse through
Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...by John Stossel. I've always been of fan of John Stossel work on ABC news. If that name only sounds familiar to you, think of the guy with the mustache on 20/20 that does stories on government waste, social inequality, and mythbusting.
My favorite pieces by him have been recent work in which he busts open long held myths that many people have taken as fact for decades.
Some of these myths include:
You should not swim until an hour after eating (he had a whole swim team chow down and then dive right in to prove his point, in addition to contributions from physicians)
We are cutting down all of out trees and eventually there will be none left. (He cites government forest service statistics that show that there is in fact more acreage of woods in the country today than there was in 1904.)
The rich don't pay a fair proportion of taxes. (Too lengthy to go into here but he did have evidence)
Anyways onto the book. In it he lays out his personal beliefs in addition to telling the story of his years in the journalism business. In particular, he his beliefs about the free market, government controls etc. He of course throws in some racier topics to keep the reader interested, such as his belief that prostitution should be legal (paraphrasing 'Male athletes can use their body to make a living, why can't a woman if she wants to?') An interesting, if somewhat shallow arguement. He makes similar statements about legalizing drugs. Interesting opinions from a libritarian (which most people would call an 'extreme republican'). More interesting is the fact that this man has been working for years at a "liberal" media outlet like ABC news.
I found that in many ways I agreed with his general philosophy that we are best off when the government does not try to control our personal or financial lives. Some of his ideas are more extreme than mine but the general concepts are there.
