Guest Post by John Stossel
Do I live in an alternate universe?
The media tell me my side is winning.
Salon claims, “We all live in Kochland, the Koch brothers’ libertarian utopia.”
Tucker Carlson says, “Our leadership class remains resolutely libertarian.”
What? Who? Not President Biden.
Biden already spent $1.9 trillion on COVID-19 “recovery” mostly unrelated to COVID. Now, he wants trillions more for an “infrastructure” bill, even though most of the spending would not go to infrastructure. He’s eager to regulate more, too.
Maybe the pundits were talking about former President Trump. He tried to deregulate — a little.
But Trump vilified trade and raised military spending, increasing our debt by trillions.
We libertarians want to reduce debt and believe trade and immigration are good for America. Above all, we believe the best government governs least.
That’s not what I hear from most Democrats and Republicans.
So, how can pundits from both left and right say libertarian ideas are winning?
“In a way, we are winning,” answers the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, author of “The Libertarian Mind,” in my latest video.
“Over the past couple of hundred years, we’ve moved from a world where very few people had rights and markets were not free — to a world mostly marked by religious freedom, personal freedom, freedom of speech, property rights markets, the rule of law.”
For most of history, no country had those things. As a result, says Boaz, “There was practically no economic growth, no increase in human rights and justice.”
Kings and tyrants ruled, enslaving people, stealing property and waging wars that lasted decades.
Then, in 1700 “suddenly, limited government and property rights and markets came into the world,” Boaz points out.
The result was a sudden increase in prosperity. Americans now are told that “the poor get poorer,” but it’s not true. Americans are 30 times richer than we were 200 years ago. When America began, rich people were poorer than poor people are today.
“In Colonial America,” says Boaz, “(if) you were traveling and you wanted a place to sleep, you’d go to an inn where everyone shared a bed.”
Benjamin Franklin and John Adams shared a bed on one of their diplomatic missions. They fought whether or not the window should be open.
John Jay, America’s first chief justice of the Supreme Court, complained about “sleeping with strangers and picking up bedbugs and lice,” says Boaz. “It’s not like that anymore because of the increase in wealth.”
Today, at motels all over America, middle-class and poor people have their own beds.
When markets are free and private property is protected, innovation happens in ways that allow ordinary people to live better. Over time, that innovation multiplies. It’s why, today, most of us live better than kings once did.
Louis XIV had hundreds of servants who prepared him dinner. Today, my supermarket offers me a buffet Louis XIV couldn’t imagine. Thanks to trade and property rights and markets, each of us lives as if we had more servants than kings.
We also live longer.
“President Calvin Coolidge’s teenage son was playing tennis on the White House tennis court,” says Boaz. “He got a blister on his foot and the blister got infected, and the health care available to the son of the president of the United States was not sufficient to keep him from dying.”
Few of us notice such steady progress.
The media give us bad news. “They tell us about cancer clusters and coups in Myanmar,” says Boaz. As a result: “We forget the big picture. It’s important to remember the big picture so that we don’t lose it.”
The big picture also includes progress in fairness and decency.
“We’ve moved from ‘some people have privileges that others don’t’ to ‘human rights belong to women and Black people and gay people,'” Boaz reminds us.
“The direction of history has been in the direction of markets, personal freedom, human rights, democratic governance, and that’s what libertarians advocate.”
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
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All these articles that say Biden this and Biden that are all such bullshit…everyone with half a brain knows he is a selected puppet blathermouth corrupt babbling idiot…who does exactly what he is told.
Yep. He’s off my list. Either in denial or the 90’s. Neither is helpful and words really matter now.
Auntie has just two questions for Mr. Stossel:
1. Do you wear a mask?
2. Have you received a CoVid-19 “vaccination”?
Asking for a liberty minded friend.
I think any meaningful comparisons regarding liberty then vs. now should stick to the last two or 3 generations. You need to compare apples with apples and stick to post WW2 times. Are markets freer now than in my grandfather’s time? No. Am I, as an individual, freer? No. Are governments more or less intrusive now or then? Rhetorical question.
We’re told that racism is so deeply rooted in our nation’s consciousness that America is irredeemable. That is an atrocious lie. Racism isn’t systemic in America – corruption is.
“Racism isn’t systemic in America – corruption is”.
In the big picture I would restate that to:
“Racism and corruption is systemic in fallen man…but America ‘was’ the cleanest dirtiest shirt in God’s human hamper.
Valence, Liberty:
I knew a guy who could serve up negative valence in his normal right dominant stance, then flip ‘round the other way & do it just as good from a left dominant stance. His opponents had no ambivalence about their own affective states: it was curtains for them.
Cross-eye dominance and cross-eyed courage are rare attributes…and if put together are super deadly.
Look at any switch hitter killer.
Killing a bad guy is easy peasy…
The problem is most people who kill think/believe they’re the good guy…
That’s one of the many reasons why there is so much killing.
Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin were in the real shit…poor ole Big Bad Swaggering John Wayne was the only actor/pretender in that scene.
He had his real life chance not to pretend/act…and opted out.
Yes. But being in the real shit, per Butler, must disregard much to get to bragging rites…it’s cooked books embezzlement. I have no doubt Lee Marvin was a tough sumbitch.
I live in the same city as The Kochs , the Kochs aren’t libertarian they are our ruling elite they only donate (buy) to politicians who will pass the legislation they want. They are the reason we have a pos Democrat governor all they care about are thier next billion dollars
Oh they are libertarian all right. That is what it is.
I would say they’re no Libertarian at all.
Of course liberty is winning.
Faggot marriages.
Faggot, tranny, and race-mixing brainwashing for the kids at school, in movies, and on TV.
Destruction of the family, to make your kids easy pickings for the pedophiles/faggots.
Women in the workplace (see above).
Open borders, freedom of movement, to depress wages and dilute your political power.
Oh, so much glorious Liberty. Isn’t is wonderful?
Wow, talk about how a picture is worth a 1,000 words. This one does it for sure.
God help us. And I mean that.
Liberty gets equated with license, of all kinds…means liberty’s a mystery to many.
Mr. Stossel should explain to us what raping a country’s economic activity and production has to do with liberty. Free Trade is just another example of the dishonesty of Libertarians.
It’s not only Libertarians who support Free Trade, it’s “conservatives”, Republicans, and every pundit & talking head to the Right of Rachel Maddow (as well as all to the Left of Maddow).
This is because so-called “Free-Trade” IS Globalism. The homogenization, as much as possible, of economies, governments, regulations, and even culture among formerly sovereign nations with an eye to their future amalgamation in the One World Economy and eventual One World Government.
The UniParty is Globalist. Which is to say Global Communism. Whether you arrive there through Global Socialism, Global Fascism (Corporatism), or — better still — a combination of both, is the only distinction between factional rivalries within the UniParty.
Also his medical advancement example is correct however we’re WAY past that and into medical tyranny big time. This is not the 90’s anymore.
I’m not so sure that can be said right now. When government and corporations take over, like they are doing now, through monopolies and collusion…
It’s called Crony Capitalism, or soft Fascism.
Nepotism amongst siblings of different mothers…of “invention” (collusion). What would Zappa say? More of the same saiths, I suppose. But the colluders killed him. Iatrogenocidal privatizing of “profits” & socializing of “costs.”
Pharma companies legislated for the criminalization of drugs so they could have a monolopy on pain killers. Prisons now have a source of 25 cents per hour labor to sell.
That sentence you quoted could have an entire book written about all the things either incorrect, insane, or self-contradictory witin it.
Just as an example, democratic governMENT ** is mob rule, and is therefore antithetical to “personal freedom” (as Libertarians refer to license) or individual liberty. As another example, with one or two highly notable exceptions in the last several millennia , HISTORY has always been in the opposite direction.
Stossel hasn’t got a coherent thought in his head.
**(beware those who use the term “governance” they’re ususally trying to downplay the command & control, top down governMENT that tehy’re advocating.)
A Libertarian does not believe in just allowing any ol’ immigrant into the country to sponge off the taxpayer dime.
Libertarians believe in strong property rights. Every piece of land in this country should be owned by people and not the government, except those purposes expressly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
Therefore, in order for an immigrant to come in, someone in America has to allow them to live on their property. They just can’t squat anywhere. And that person has to take responsibility for that immigrant. That’s how it should be handled.
No that is not what they believe. If you believe that, then you are not a Libertarian.
Liberty’arian edifices. Plural. Not monolithic. But the packed earth beneath whichever statuary is NAP. That’s the is/isn’t cut. That’s why political partying liberty’arianism is oxymoron. Politics is the continuation of war – offensive war – by other means.
depends whether you’re talking small ‘l’ libertarian, or big ‘L’ Libertarian Party like Stossel.
I stopped reading Mustache Stossel when I watched a youtube with him and another woman telling me the benefits of gmo’s and pesticides. Fuck him.
Lenin said a coup follows rampant inflation. Biden is doing it. Primary Dealers and FRBNY will handle the $30 trillion National Bankruptcy. Have you reviewed the Greek bankruptcy ? Ref; https://genzconservative.com/the-federal-reserve-for-dummies/#_ftn3 ….
Who is that masked man?