There is a paradoxical stupidity to Stossel's usual reactionary nonsense. A few observations.
Isn't media supposed to be liberal? Oh, sorry!
Who would provide the services Stossel mentions?
If you don't like opera on TV, no worry, the majority of your money is going into military expenditures so rest easy.
He completely lost me when he claimed FDR moved beyond liberty. I think liberty is more than a highbrow word, he obviously isn't sophisticated enough to know that.
We are the government, the government is us, Stossel would be the first tool on TV complaining about some failure of gov, so in the end this is typical useless reactionary conservative propaganda.
"The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."
http://www.quotedb.com/speeches/washington-farewell-address
"...that constitution of our nature which makes us feel more intensely what affects us directly than what affects us indirectly through others, necessarily leads to conflict between individuals. Each, in consequence, has a greater regard for his own safety or happiness, than for the safety or happiness of others; and, where these come in opposition, is ready to sacrifice the interests of others to his own. And hence, the tendency to a universal state of conflict, between individual and individual; accompanied by the connected passions of suspicion, jealousy, anger and revenge — followed by insolence, fraud and cruelty — and, if not prevented by some controlling power, ending in a state of universal discord and confusion, destructive of the social state and the ends for which it is ordained.
This controlling power, wherever vested, or by whomsoever exercised, is GOVERNMENT."
Disquisition on Government John C. Calhoun
http://www.constitution.org/jcc/disq_gov.htm
