Books by John Stossel
Give Me a Break

An Intriguing Personal Journey from Liberal to Libertarian, January 20, 2004

As a long-time resident of the greater NYC Metropolitan area, I have been familiar with the work of John Stossel since his appearances on WCBS-TV as an in-your-face consumer reporter early in his career.

I took notice when he moved to network TV after being hired by Roone Arledge, and continued to enjoy his reporting even though I sometimes disagreed with some of his premises. I then became a viewer of his specials which often questioned liberal orthodoxy with such catchy titles as "Are We Scaring Ourselves To Death?"

I regularly found these to be both informative and provocative. Thus, I was very pleased to meet when we both attended a conference several years ago. Since then I have seen him once or twice a year at other events that we have both attended and regard him as a casual friend since we share a common philosophical outlook with regard to the role of government in our lives.

When I happened to see John at a recent meeting and he mentioned that he was about to have a book published, I asked him if I could get a review copy in order to review it for Amazon and his publisher agreed. Of course, I recognized that if I didn't like the book, a bad review might chill our friendship, but fortunately this is a thoroughly enjoyable recounting of John's career.

As a disclaimer, I want to mention that my belief in the educational value of John's work (and its potential to be a catalyst for classroom discussion of the topics involved) has led me to also provide some modest financial support to intheclassroom.org, the organization which provides copies of John's programs and classroom guides to high school and college teachers interested in the material.

I view this book as a semi-autobiography, because while it is John Stossel's story told in his own words it involves his professional life supplemented by anecdotes from his personal life only where necessary to inform the story. (E.g, in one case he uses his experience as a father of a boy and a girl to discuss his insights regarding the "no gender difference" agenda of radical feminists.

In another instance he discusses his stuttering in the context of the ADA - Americans with Disabilities Act.) This book benefits from the author's long media experience; as opposed to many non-fiction books which I have found necessary to read in short segments interspersed with other tasks, this narrative flowed quite smoothly and the material was presented in sound-bite segments which were both interesting and comprehensible.

There were many complex ideas, but the author's presentation benefited from having had to thoroughly analyze and understand them in order to present them convincingly on TV, a medium which is often geared towards viewers with short attention spans and their fingers on their remote controls.

Stossel uses extensive examples throughout this book to illustrate how his consumer reporting led him to a better understanding of how the profit motive and capitalism encourage entrepreneurs to act in ways that provide enormous long term benefits to consumers despite the cheats and scoundrels that he so often successfully exposed as a zealous reporter. concurrently he noticed that the proposed "solutions" provided by government regulations and runaway lawsuits were often counterproductive in that the problems often remained or were sometimes even made worse.

Attempts to redistribute the wealth accumulated by the businessmen who provided innovative goods and services meant that their innovation was often stifled, and government attempts to correct "market failures" led to such disasters as 'public housing " being trashed by tenants who had had no influence over the management of their developments and no economic interest in the property. The book is filled with examples of politicians selectively favoring their friends and enforcing the laws, often to the detriment of the least fortunate in our society.

It also contains interesting material that his researchers assembled that questions the common wisdom in many areas. He presents some wonderful statistics concerning such controversial areas as the relationship between poverty and societal freedom and the relative danger which we face from different commonly perceived risks. (Are you aware that despite the general dread of toxic waste and massive spending on remediation, fire is responsible for the loss of five times as many days of life on average for an American as is toxic waste?)

Stossel deserves great credit for actually letting the reality of his experiences overcome many of the preconceptions upon which his beliefs were based, and recognizing that many of the sacrosanct liberal solutions to people's problems were counterproductive despite the best of intentions. This is an easy book to read, since it is written in a conversational style. It is likely to make the extreme liberals who read it apoplectic, since the evidence which Stossel assembles is so antithetical to many of their beliefs.

But it will also make many conservatives uneasy, since he is as critical of their attempts at social engineering and the limitations which they try to impose on personal freedom and the rights of privacy in the guise of morality as he is of the liberal's desire for government intervention in the economic sphere and attempts to impose their "politically correct" solutions upon us.

Thus, he advocates legalization of drugs, not because he sanctions their use but because he views the "war on drugs' as very counterproductive to our society, other goals of our law enforcement community, and our international relations.

I greatly enjoyed this book and strongly recommend it for anyone with an open mind and an interest in the libertarian view of the world. My one caveat is that there is some repetitive material in here for those who are familiar with the author's reporting and watch his programs regularly, but this was definitely not enough of a negative to affect my great enjoyment or my rating.

Tucker Andersen