Pubdate: Tue, 16 Oct 2007
Source: Badger Herald (U of WI, Madison, WI Edu)
Copyright: 2007 Badger Herald
Contact:  http://www.badgerherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/711
Author: Kailey Bender
Note: Nick Penzenstadler contributed to this report.

'20/20' STAR SOUNDS OFF ON GOVERNMENT

"20/20" co-anchor John Stossel spoke to University of Wisconsin 
students Monday evening at the Memorial Union Theatre encouraging 
individual liberty and capitalism in a lecture presented by 
Collegians For a Constructive Tomorrow.

Stossel graduated from Princeton University in 1969 and joined the 
ABC news program in 1981. He became an anchor in 2003 and has 
received 19 Emmy Awards.

Stossel focused his lecture on the dangers of government and the 
importance of protecting individual rights.

"Individual liberty is the most important thing," Stossel said in an 
interview with The Badger Herald before the event. "Central planning 
of all kinds takes people's freedom and their money and makes life worse."

Stossel began his lecture by discussing the lessons he has learned 
through his experiences in journalism.

"I used to believe that you need smart people to set rules to protect 
us from greedy capitalists," Stossel said.

After he spent years doing consumer reporting, however, he said he 
realized that "competition between companies protects consumers 
better than the government."

Stossel said no matter how many regulations the government has made 
in the past, there have always been those who break the rules.

"More regulations and rules were being made, but they still weren't 
being followed," Stossel said. "The cheaters are still going to cheat."

Stossel said after watching government organizations such as the Food 
and Drug Administration and Occupation Safety and Health 
Administration work, he has come to realize they often make work less 
safe by their unintended consequences.

Stossel used the example of illegal drugs to show how regulation 
doesn't always accomplish what it intends to.

"Because the drugs are illegal, the buyers have to steal, and this 
causes crime," Stossel said.

Illegal drugs also encourage police bribing and rich criminal gangs, 
according to Stossel.

He said government regulation also hurts legal drugs. In the time it 
takes for new drugs to be put out on the market, lives could have 
been saved, Stossel said.

"The government protects us from good things, which is worse than 
protecting us from bad things," Stossel said.

Stossel suggested the FDA be voluntary and people should decide for 
themselves what they want to put in their own bodies.

"Isn't leaving absolute choice up to the consumer what America is all 
about?" Stossel asked the audience.

UW junior Sol Grosskopf, who attended the lecture, said he agreed 
with most of Stossel's points about small government but added the 
host may have gone a bit beyond his own views in some areas.

"On a few things he may have gone a little bit overboard but we may 
differ more on societal values and how they are portrayed," Grosskopf said.

Overall, though, Stossel said Americans are voluntarily giving back 
their freedom to the government.

"I encourage you to fight for the liberty that made America great and 
all things possible," Stossel said.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake