I Shrugged-John Stossel (file this under"with friends like this.....")

[Origanalist]

Many libertarians, outraged by how our government spies on us, call me a "traitor" because I'm not very angry. I understand that the National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls could put us on a terrible, privacy-crushing slippery slope.

But we're not there yet.

Some perspective:

We are less closely watched by government than citizens of other countries. There are about 3,000 government security cameras around New York City, but London has 500,000.

Some people in London love that, believing that the extra surveillance deters crime and catches terrorists. I thought government cameras helped identify the Boston Marathon bombers, but Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told me that those cameras provide an illusion of security at a nasty price.

"These cameras reveal very private information -- where you go, who you go there with," she said. "They can record you going into the sex therapist's office, the gay bar, the abortion clinic, any number of places that you would probably not want other people to know that you're going. "

She says that loss of privacy doesn't even make us safer.

"It isn't necessarily how we found the Boston Marathon bomber. There were a lot of things going on there ... eyewitnesses identifications, cameras that were not government-owned (often cellphones) and eventually the fingerprints of the older brother ... if the cameras were really successful, there would be no crime in London."

But "no crime" is too much to demand. I'm convinced that widespread use of cameras is one reason crime is down in America. Some criminals are caught, and others deterred.

It does make a difference if cameras are controlled by a city government or a private department store. No store can lock me up. But I hate to get bogged down in the surveillance debate when there are so many other ways that government clearly threatens our freedom and our finances, while accomplishing nothing.

Thinking about the NSA revelation, I also thought about other things my government does that I really hate. Within a few hours, I had a list of 100 -- it was surprisingly easy. I encourage you to start a list of your own. Here are just a few example of horrible, destructive government:

-- Government (federal and local) now employs 22 million Americans. That's outrageous.

-- Government runs up a $17 trillion deficit and yet continues to throw our money at things like $100 million presidential trips, million-dollar bus stops and pork projects, as well as thousands of programs that don't work.

-- It funds a drug war that causes crime and imprisons millions, disproportionately minorities. That's horrible.

-- It spends your money on corporate welfare. And farm subsidies. And flood insurance that helps higher-income people like me build homes in risky spots.

-- Government keeps American Indians poor by smothering them with socialist central planning. It does this despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the obvious failure of socialism everywhere. That's evil.

-- So are "too big to fail" bank bailouts. And other bailouts.

-- I'm furious that there are now 175,000 pages of federal law. No one understands all the laws, but they keep passing more. How dare they!

NSA spying seems less horrible than these other abuses, especially if data mining might prevent terrorism.

I suspect people are outraged by the NSA in part because new threats seem scarier than old, familiar ones. That's a trick government itself exploits all the time: Each new drug, each new health threat, each new dictator is made to sound like the most horrible thing ever.

We should be wary of treating the new danger as if it's the biggest danger.

I don't suggest that we should be passive about data mining and surveillance. But we should not let the latest threat make us passive about the old ones, some of them much more clearly wrong.

What we already know about government is even scarier than what they know about us.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2013/07/03/i-shrugged-n1632389/page/full

[ghengis86]

Lol...Dance, Stossel, dance! Little bitch-ass pussy. Let me know when you grow a spine

[Scrapmo]

I understand that the National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls could put us on a terrible, privacy-crushing slippery slope.

But we're not there yet.

Hey dont worry guys, Live it up, pop the champagne we haven't been completely fucked yet. Awesome. I guess we should reserve our anger for when its too late.


We are less closely watched by government than citizens of other countries. There are about 3,000 government security cameras around New York City, but London has 500,000.


Well that is a relief. As long as we aren't the worst everything is A-OK. "NOT THE WORST. NOT THE WORST. USA! USA!" This kind of attitude just exudes excellence.

"Guys, lets cool all this revolution talk. After all King George is way worse on other territories."

[Origanalist]

Hey dont worry guys, Live it up, pop the champagne we haven't been completely fucked yet. Awesome. I guess we should reserve our anger for when its too late.


I know, WTH?????

[juleswin]

"Guys, lets cool all this revolution talk. After all King George is way worse on other territories."

Nailed it. +rep

[Sola_Fide]

Stossel has failed on this issue. Its going to be hard for me to ever take him seriously again.

[liberty2897]

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[LibertyEagle]

I've never thought of Stossel as a libertarian-type. More as a Ralph Nader-type

[69360]

What if Snowden dumps more info that proves Stossel wrong and we're already at the bottom of his slippery slope? Will he eat crow or still defend the feds?

[mrsat_98]

I shrugged and said hmmm, but I knew they where spying on us for several years. geeze y'all didnt know.

[kahless]

He is on a Neocon news channel playing his part accordingly. I am sure management is quite happy with this and how he is wishy washy using the weakest facts to back up Libertarian beliefs.

[jtstellar]

like i conjectured in my thread.. stossel must be getting alzheimers or something.. on fox he was asking justin amash why the nsa story is even important, then within 5 minutes he was full on blasting the irs for data collection and discrimination.

but he doesn't think we should take away potential tools the irs can use. unless he thinks there's no chance in hell government agencies will ever share information. ya. like i said, he must be getting alzheimers

[TaftFan]

I've never thought of Stossel as a libertarian-type. More as a Ralph Nader-type

He's definitely a libertarian type. Nader is a liberal.

[TaftFan]

I'm not going to bash him because I understand where he is coming from.

We all knew we were being spied on before the "official" story broke. And there are tons of big issues that nobody will focus on that are arguably much more harmful.

Stossel just needs to understand this is bad as well.

I'm still a big fan of his regardless of his position on this.

[Antischism]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrX9Ca7LSyQ

Stossel might need another couple of these.

[puppetmaster]

Damn I hate it when so called journalists write or say "Emails".....Email is already plural you fucking imbeciles.

[Henry Rogue]

Stossel is entitled to his opinion, but this goes way beyond that. This is willful ignorance and no mention of blow back the cause of "terrorism". He's protecting his paycheck.

[Christian Liberty]

I don't think Stossel is saying this is OK, but I still think he's underscoring how important it is.

I don't give a crap about the drug laws compared to this. I don't give a crap about basically any other law compared to this. Because this is the ENFORCEMENT ARM of these awful laws that could never even be enforced half the time in a decent system, regardless of the laws themselves.

[Henry Rogue]

Funny how the sheep are shepherded by a thing called fox. Should have named it wolf news.

[heavenlyboy34]

Damn I hate it when so called journalists write or say "Emails".....Email is already plural you fucking imbeciles.
I hear "emails" used as a plural all the time. It's just a colloquial variant of "email messages". This sort of thing has nothing to do with intelligence. It's just the nature of language to change grammatically, semantically, etc. over time

[jclay2]

Keep digging yourself into the hole of irrelevance Stossel. When the government throws you in prison for non compliance, I will remember to just shrug it off as no biggie. Tons of other problems to worry about, you know.

[helmuth_hubener]

Man, he is just not going to let this go! Stossel, Stossel, Stossel. What are you doing?

He truly has failed on this issue. I'm not going to throw him under the bus, he's still a libertarian and one of the good guys, but boy! This kind of stuff makes a guy wonder.

[krugminator]

I basically agree with Stossel but I do wish he would stop bringing it up. He is beating a dead horse.

I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on Stossel's throat. He is great spokesman for libertarianism. He should get a little respect. He was doing specials on libertarian ideals on a popular show long before there was a libertarian audience.

[Keith and stuff]

I am so mixed. IMO, Stossel wrote perhaps 1 of the best books to introduce people to libertarianism and he has spoken very highly of New Hampshire and the Free State Project many times. On the other hand, he is nuts in this area :(

[helmuth_hubener]

1 of the best books to introduce people to libertarianism Which one? I've never read any of his books, but he has a bunch of them, I think.

[Keith and stuff]

Which one? I've never read any of his books, but he has a bunch of them, I think.
His best and least expensive book is fantastic IMO. Used for as low as 1 cent plus shipping. I recommend getting it from http://amazonus.freetalklive.com Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...

[Henry Rogue]

Man, he is just not going to let this go! Stossel, Stossel, Stossel. What are you doing?

He truly has failed on this issue. I'm not going to throw him under the bus, he's still a libertarian and one of the good guys, but boy! This kind of stuff makes a guy wonder. He has always been on fox business channel (foxes secondary channel), not on fox news channel. Last week after his show about the nsa whistle blowing was aired on fox business, it was air on fox news. I don't think any of his shows has ever aired on fox news before to the best of my knowledge. Paycheck.

My 1000th post.

[Keith and stuff]

He has always been on fox business channel (foxes secondary channel), not on fox news channel. Last week after his show about the nsa whistle blowing was aired on fox business, it was air on fox news. I don't think any of his shows has ever aired on fox news before to the best of my knowledge. Paycheck.

My 1000th post.
He has had plenty of his shows air on ABC in prime time and plenty of other shows air on Fox News.

[Henry Rogue]

He has had plenty of his shows air on ABC in prime time and plenty of other shows air on Fox News.My mistake then, i've never seen his on fox news, while browsing the onscreen guide.

[TaftFan]

He goes on Foxnews as a contributor, mainly to debate O'Reilly

[Origanalist]

Funny how the sheep are shepherded by a thing called fox. Should have named it wolf news.

I don't know, reading the comments over at "Townhall", clearly Fox News territory most of them aren't buying it.

[Henry Rogue]

I don't know, reading the comments over at "Townhall", clearly Fox News territory most of them aren't buying it.Do you mean they aren't buying the "nsa is good" rhetoric or Stossel is suddenly one of them?

[Origanalist]

Do you mean they aren't buying the "nsa is good" rhetoric or Stossel is suddenly one of them?

They aren't buying his line that the nsa's spying is not worthy of outrage. In fact, I'm quite surprised at the level of support for him there still, after the talking heads turned on him.

[RM918]

It seems to me that he's not supporting the NSA so much as saying he doesn't think it's that big a deal compared to all the other stuff the government does - of course I disagree with him there, but I really don't think this is worth all the comments lambasting him for being a charlatan either. I don't agree with Stossel all the time, but he's not someone who fits the profile of speaking libertarian rhetoric just so he can draw them toward some larger anti-libertarian policies.

[mac_hine]

The NSA must have some good dirt on him. Why else would a libertarian abandon libertarian principles on an issue as cut and dry as NSA spying?

Is Stossel a fraud? Or does he have some serious skeletons in his closet?

It has to be one or the either.

[mac_hine]

He is on a Neocon news channel playing his part accordingly. I am sure management is quite happy with this and how he is wishy washy using the weakest facts to back up Libertarian beliefs.

Well, the FOX News Senior Judicial Analyst, Judge Nap has taken him to task for his views. What does that say?

Judge Andrew Napolitano
with Brian Wilson
June 20, 2013
http://www.libertasmediaproject.com/archive.html

In the latest "Judging Freedom" podcast, Brian and Judge Andrew Napolitano analyze Privacy, John Stossel and Edward Snowden.

[LibertyEagle]

He's definitely a libertarian type. Nader is a liberal.

Uh huh and he is brushing off the government monitoring our every move. That in no way is libertarian. Heck, I'm a paleocon and the government spying on us is definitely NOT ok.

[TaftFan]

Uh huh and he is brushing off the government monitoring our every move. That in no way is libertarian. Heck, I'm a paleocon and the government spying on us is definitely NOT ok.

I've read two of his books and watched him for years. He is a libertarian and is slipping on this one issue. He is a defender of capitalism which means he is not a Nader type.

[Henry Rogue]

Well, the FOX News Senior Judicial Analyst, Judge Nap has taken him to task for his views. What does that say?

Judge Andrew Napolitano
with Brian Wilson
June 20, 2013
http://www.libertasmediaproject.com/archive.html

In the latest "Judging Freedom" podcast, Brian and Judge Andrew Napolitano analyze Privacy, John Stossel and Edward Snowden.It says the Judge is awesome. I can't think of anything else, to many beers tonight. very happy

[Keith and stuff]

It seems to me that he's not supporting the NSA so much as saying he doesn't think it's that big a deal compared to all the other stuff the government does - of course I disagree with him there, but I really don't think this is worth all the comments lambasting him for being a charlatan either. I don't agree with Stossel all the time, but he's not someone who fits the profile of speaking libertarian rhetoric just so he can draw them toward some larger anti-libertarian policies.

You make an interesting point. Stossel lives in Manhattan, last I heard, the least free place in the US. Maybe there is something too it not being a big deal to him personally.

[LibertyEagle]

I've read two of his books and watched him for years. He is a libertarian and is slipping on this one issue. He is a defender of capitalism which means he is not a Nader type.

I've watched him for years too and this isn't the first thing he has "slipped" on. I still like him and all, but he needs some work on principles.

[Occam's Banana]

Many libertarians, outraged by how our government spies on us, call me a "traitor" because I'm not very angry. I understand that the National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls could put us on a terrible, privacy-crushing slippery slope.

But we're not there yet.

So - we should just wait until we are lying bruised and broken at the bottom of that "slippery slope" before we start to bitch about it. Got it.

SMGDH.


Thinking about the NSA revelation, I also thought about other things my government does that I really hate. Within a few hours, I had a list of 100 -- it was surprisingly easy. I encourage you to start a list of your own. Here are just a few example of horrible, destructive government:

-- Government (federal and local) now employs 22 million Americans. That's outrageous.

-- Government runs up a $17 trillion deficit and yet continues to throw our money at things like $100 million presidential trips, million-dollar bus stops and pork projects, as well as thousands of programs that don't work.

-- It funds a drug war that causes crime and imprisons millions, disproportionately minorities. That's horrible.

-- It spends your money on corporate welfare. And farm subsidies. And flood insurance that helps higher-income people like me build homes in risky spots.

-- Government keeps American Indians poor by smothering them with socialist central planning. It does this despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the obvious failure of socialism everywhere. That's evil.

-- So are "too big to fail" bank bailouts. And other bailouts.

-- I'm furious that there are now 175,000 pages of federal law. No one understands all the laws, but they keep passing more. How dare they!

Well guess what, Mr. Stossel? None of the things on your list just started out that way!

Every single item on the list of "things John Stossel hates" started out at the top of a "slippery slope."


NSA spying seems less horrible than these other abuses, especially if data mining might prevent terrorism.

I suspect people are outraged by the NSA in part because new threats seem scarier than old, familiar ones. That's a trick government itself exploits all the time: Each new drug, each new health threat, each new dictator is made to sound like the most horrible thing ever.

We should be wary of treating the new danger as if it's the biggest danger.

I don't suggest that we should be passive about data mining and surveillance. But we should not let the latest threat make us passive about the old ones, some of them much more clearly wrong.

God damn you! Are you really such a staggering imbecile? The reason those "old threats" lasted long enough to become "old" threats is becasue people like you (who ought to have known better) pooh-poohed the idea that they were serious threats at all when they were "new."

The "we have more important things to worry about" dodge is why we are in the mess we are in to begin with.


What we already know about government is even scarier than what they know about us.

Bullshit. And in any case, neither of those things is anywhere near as scary as what we don't know about the government and what it might be doing with whatever it knows - actions that are swathed in a cloak of super-secrecy on the excuse that they are "for our own good" (when in fact, they are as often as not for the government's own good - or the good of some partisan or special-interest faction within the government). This is perfectly illustrated by things such as the recent IRS scandal. This is why what Edward Snowden has done is so important and valuable.