John Stossel at Being an American Essay Gala
0:07 [Applause] [Music] I so the Bill of Rights Institute the Bill of Rights first one I think is the most important and I really love it and that it says Congress shall pass no law
0:29 I just stop there [Applause] and we don’t hear that enough especially here in Washington because they think they’re not doing their job unless they’re passing a law and probably violating the Constitution but that’s a beautiful
0:50 concept the founders had a good idea when they said there was a reason to restrict the power of the people in this town Congress shall pass no no law Free Speech against speech is of course the first amendment uh Juan has had his own experience there uh on the other hand I
1:12 mean at Fox I work now for Fox if they don’t like what I say First Amendment doesn’t apply to them they can fire me I mean they respect free speech at Fox but they could fire me and that’s okay with me because the Bill of Rights applies only to govern government for good reason there’s lots of TV stations
1:34 around but there’s only one government one has his problem with the idiots at NPR I don’t know what they are are they government are they private I mean they only get a little of their money from the government they could be private then they could say whatever silly rules
1:55 they want but they are national public radio so and they get money from you so their government so the Constitution should apply to them and we we take the First Amendment for granted in this country I mean we don’t Canada we think of America like but in Canada when a magazine
2:15 published those Danish cartoons that depicted Muhammad in unflattering ways after September 11th those cartoons caused riots in the Middle East when a Canadian magazine published some of those cartoons they got prosecuted by Canadian authorities for perpetuating a hate
2:35 crime against Muslims we shouldn’t take our first amendment for granted we have it in the United States most countries don’t have a right to free speech but it’s important and as I look through some of these essays that have submitted one caught my eye from ad Steinbach of St Louis she wrote a essay
2:58 about dissent dissent she wrote or exercising the right to freedom of speech is the most essential value to being an American and you know we could argue about that and there are a lot of essays you wrote that might be a more essential value I I won’t quarrel with it but it’s certainly one of them and she goes on to
3:21 say citizens should not only have a right but an obligation to speak out against tyrannical in tyrannical government and that of course is what our Founders did and that of course is what is our job if our government gets to be
3:43 tyrannical and we who believe in Freedom are often fond of complaining about the intrusions on freedom I mean they pass 8,000 pages of new rules every year because The Regulators in this town think they’re not doing their job job if they’re not passing a new rule and all that eats into our freedom it’s a spiderweb of
4:04 little laws that take away our freedom all well intended though they don’t accomplish the goals but by and large we have become more free in this country it’s easy to say we’re less free in terms of taxes or if you’re trying to start a business but if you’re a woman if you’re black or if you’re gay you are
4:26 much more free than you were when I was a kid people forget women used to have to get their husband’s permission to get a credit card the story of Black America is well known I mean look how much Freer gays are we have become a much Freer more tolerant Society in so many ways because people can speak out
4:48 against what they consider to be tyranny and what I would like to speak out against and what I do in my job what I view is tyrannical is the size of the state in America because as it grows it makes us less free the more money government creates no jobs government
5:08 doesn’t create any money so everything they do more of we have less of and the current Administration and the Bush Administration before it talked a lot about investment and they spent a ton on investment in great things and it is intuitive if you don’t really understand economics to believe that the why central planners and state
5:31 capitals in Washington DC can invest better that maybe we do need High-Speed Rail or we need Sputnik uh retaliation or we need government to plan it rather than the free market but we should have learned from the Soviet Union it doesn’t work very well I mean again and again I
5:53 I argue about education I hope your schools are good K through 12 education in America America is lousy according to the international tests we get our clocks cleaned by people in other countries that spend half as much in education as we do and I say it’s because you don’t have a free market free market is what brings us all
6:14 the good stuff that makes our life better and education K through 12 is largely a Government monopoly and they don’t do things very well and people say to me well wa you got to have government running education because it’s not like cars or computers or cell phon because the customer doesn’t know what’s best you don’t know about curriculum
6:35 people say the same thing about Healthcare the Healthcare Customer can’t make his own decision about whether he has cancer or not so the market doesn’t apply and intuitively that makes sense but 40 Years of reporting have taught me that the market does everything better and as an example take cars I mean you can equally say none of you I assume
6:57 understand what makes one car run better than another or safer than another it’s just you need Central planners to design the cars and yet look what happened when you had Central planners designing the cars I mean what was the best that the planned economies could produce it was the
7:20 trabant is the slide up okay it’s over there um that was the be that and the ugle that was the best they could do it was such a bad car that she had to put the oil and gas in separately and shake the car to mix them together and yet this was the pride of the Eastern block and it was made by those East German Engineers no
7:43 slouches so why this doesn’t make sense this East German Engineers how come they’re best I mean the trabant disappeared as soon as the Berlin Wall went down why couldn’t their best compete with our media Joker product because not everybody has to be an expert for the free market to work
8:05 its magic you just need Word of Mouth the good news spread if you people like the car they talk about it the good companies Thrive the bad ones atrophy that protects the poor too but this vision is not what our governing classes have embraced this
8:25 idea of limited government that the founders talked about and you can see it in the growth of government I mean here it is since the beginning of the country is it I can’t see what’s I mean here it is adjusted for population growth I mean for most of the history of America government was less than 5% of
8:45 GDP it’s only since lynen Johnson and the promises of the Great Society that the line starts to go straight up and now we’ve all heard about how we’re on an unsustainable course and yet until recently they haven’t been embarrassed by this they just keep subsidizing more things everybody needs help government can help
9:07 and that’s intuitive and here in Washington if you’re a congressman you hear people testify before you and 99% of the people testifying are people saying you have to help us we’re in need and look at the great things we’ve done with this program it’s very hard to say no to that but the result of that is that they
9:27 even subsidize foolish rich people like me this is a house I built did it click did it workplace oh okay let’s talk about that I goofed another example of the conceit of the self-anointed in government they say
9:49 that Americans are safer now because of the occupa of Osha the occupational safety and health authority and the head of Osha under President Clinton was fond of showing this chart about how injuries and deaths I guess this chart is deaths boy I wish I could see it um have dropped steadily since the
10:10 beginning of Osha and this makes you think right I mean these factories these greedy employers would recklessly kill their employers if it weren’t for government stopping them and look how many lives we’ve saved because of Osha and I can do stories about how OSHA has Silly rules that are this thick that
10:30 torture companies and cause some companies not even to go into business because they can’t afford to hire the lawyers to understand the rules that say the railing has to be exactly this high and you can get fined if you don’t have if it’s an inch lower but you won’t believe me because you say look at that chart look how many lives we’ve saved but then researchers went back and
10:52 did another chart that looked at workplace deaths from that time and also an equal time before and look what they found things were getting better anyway in a free country life gets better people get smarter as people get
11:12 richer they care more about health and safety even unions help they have their work roles and even the worst of the greediest employer is doesn’t want to kill his employees if only because he’ll have to spend more to train new ones he has a self-interest in making the workplace better but the point is that
11:33 workplaces were getting better before Osha Osha if you look at that graph the slope of the line is the same OSHA made no difference the government Regulators are like someone who gets in front of a parade and claims to lead the parade but they didn’t lead the P parade limited government Freedom an open Society led the
11:55 parade and then going back to the other point and and yet the sense in Washington is that we have to do everything we have to make sure nobody suffers that people buy the insurance that’s the big thing with healthc care it also applied to flood insurance homes were getting flooded and people were too lazy or too stupid to buy flood
12:17 insurance so then the government felt well we have to bail all of them out far better if we encourage them to buy insurance but it costs too much those greedy private insurance companies they’re charging too much so we’re going to offer Federal flood insurance and we know how to price it but we’ll price it lower than these greedy private companies and that’ll help America and
12:38 so they offered people cheap Federal flood insurance and so I built this beach house I said to my father would you help me on the mortgage and he said no are you kidding it’s on the edge of an ocean why would I help you this is a stupid place to build a house it’s on sand that’s me in the upper left corner
12:58 there I was younger then and I said but but Dad I can’t lose the architect explain to me there’s this thing called Federal flood insurance for $200 a year I’m guaranteed that if the house won’t wash away have lots of beach in front of me that big Dune if it does wash away that they’ll cover me and so
13:20 he did help me out and I built the house and sure enough eight years later the water came in and washed away the first floor and I have to thank you because I never invited you there but you helped me pay to replace that first floor and eventually the whole house
13:41 went and you again paid I mean when you look at that growth of government chart and you think about some of that money is going to subsidize people like me building houses on the edge of an ocean the role of government has gone well beyond the constitu and I mean think about it this is this
14:02 is the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence together it’s this thin these were the rules that the founders set and now we get 880,000 Pages added to the Federal Register every year I mean this is what build America the 880,000 pages don’t help
14:22 this but they keep growing it now the same student ad steinach go I cited she goes on to say now my generation’s been labeled as apathetic and self-absorbed and when I was your age I viewed that as a problem I no longer do I I now think that’s a good
14:43 thing because most of your friends don’t know anything and I’m okay if they don’t vote cuz I didn’t know anything I mean I was older than you I went to Princeton where supposedly I learned a lot and when I graduated I didn’t know anything I was taught that government could solve
15:04 poverty and make the world better had I bothered to vote then had I been political instead of looking to meet girls I I would have been destructive to America so I think some apathy is a good thing and there there is a saying that that 1% of the people in America some of you most of you make things happen and
15:25 9% of America watches those people make things happen happen those are the people watching CNN and fox and then 90% of America uh wake up in the morning and they say what happened and I don’t think that’s a problem I think that’s a sign of a good country that you have lives and you know
15:47 in in horrible countries everybody votes because your life’s at stake it’s good to live in a country where you where things are going pretty well and you can be apathetic and apathy can be a good thing because why is America of all these countries in the world and six billion people on Earth and most of them
16:09 live in horrible poverty that you would find awful two billion of them live on a buck or two a day the people living on Western levels of wealth are maybe 12% of the world so why is that how come come America thrives when
16:31 most of the world struggles and we’re a new country how come we got rich and I say this to high school kids and they say well it’s because America is a democracy and we were a new country we have a lot of natural resources and that’s true and democracy is great um but India is a democracy too
16:51 and India’s been poor has lots of natural resources and the high school students say well Well India is overpopulated and that’s the image and that’s been blamed for poverty in India um but it’s not true the population density of India is the same as that of New Jersey and New jerseyy is doing
17:12 okay all right some of you don’t agree with that but it’s doing better than India it’s not about population density Holland has even greater population density and then look at look at Hong Kong Hong Kong doesn’t even have democracy they had the British rulers
17:34 and then the Communist Chinese they don’t have any natural resources they’re just a rock and yet Hong Kong went from third world desperate poverty to our level of wealth which they have now in just 50 years they have the secret to Prosperity wouldn’t the whole world
17:55 benefit from that what did Hong Kong have no natural resources no democracy but they had economic freedom because the British rulers enforced rule of law that’s important you need rule of law you need someone to make sure that I don’t kill you or take your stuff same rule you learn in
18:16 kindergarten don’t hurt other people or take their stuff and the worst places to live are the places that don’t have rule of law the African country where you’re afraid to open a factory to build something because maybe maybe your neighbor will steal what you make or the dictator will take your whole Factory so you need rule of law but then after that the British
18:38 rulers basically sat around and drank tea they left the people of Hong Kong alone and free people left alone with rule of law and right to contract they made themselves Rich that’s what economic freedom does there are these rankings of countries by economic freedom and the places that have more
18:58 are prosper and they’re nice places to live New Zealand Australia Switzerland Canada the United States places with less economic freedom are awful places to live like Cuba and Zimbabwe economic freedom works I mean the one of the other essays I read by
19:19 I’m going to mess up your name shnat Chu from Edison New Jersey wrote about industry economic freedom allows indust industry to happen which is what allows us to make our lives better this is capitalism that we take for granted in America and in many
19:40 colleges you’ll go to they will vilify it as unfair evil and yet we shouldn’t because it does wonderful things and we take it for granted we go to the supermarket and there are 30,000 products and they are un unbelievably cheap and they almost never poison you
20:00 government management can’t do that we take it for granted that we can go to a foreign country stick a piece of plastic in the wall and cash will come out and you can take that same piece of plastic and hand it to a total stranger who doesn’t even speak English and he’ll rent you a car for a week and when you get home Visa or
20:21 Mastercard will have the accounting correct to the penny we just accept that but it’s a miracle of free markets and capitalism and limited government I mean government can’t even count the votes correctly and now we want government to run healthc care I don’t think that’s a good idea the Bill of Rights and the Constitution
20:43 laid it out for us if we would just listen limited government economic freedom lift people up and I thank you for fighting for these principles that made our lives good thank you very much
21:12 so I’m told that there are two people for questions or criticisms or vicious attacks whatever you like there are two people with microphones who will go around and if you want to say something um find the you have a microphone there okay and somebody over there has a microphone so I can’t see you because there are lights in my face so I would say let’s
21:33 go from ping and pong side of the room whoever wants to say something Ah that’s better now I can see and why don’t you say you’re the guy from Oregon right Hillsboro Oregon right correct hey how about remembering that I used I used to live near there so
21:55 it’s why I know that what do you believe is the most significant threat to American Liberty and how as American citizens do you believe that or how as American citizens can we oppose this threat I think the biggest threat to Liberty is the growth of government and Thomas Jefferson said it well it it’s
22:16 the natural progress of things for government to grow and Liberty to yield and it is just natural because it’s intuitive to think you could solve problems by passing more laws and it really takes an education to wake people up to that the Tea Party Movement was pushed to the point where they started thinking about
22:36 it I don’t think they really get it the reason I have the stasel in the classroom charity is to is to buy my old specials on free markets from ABC and now Fox which gives them to me they don’t sell them to me thankfully um and to get them in the classrooms to at least show people that there is an alternative to government control because it’s not intuitive
23:00 somebody over here hi John uh my name is Dustin lechner teacher from Lawrence Kansas uh good to meet you um you compare American Education to some of these other countries that are Leaps and Bounds ahead of us in test numbers and things
23:21 of that nature um are any of these countries based on a free market educational system um to my knowledge most of them are more socialistic than the United States in their education systems um so I guess and what what do you mean by more socialistic than the US uh take Germany for instance um totally
23:42 state funded uh they’re higher education system their college system is cost them4 or500 a year to go to college um obviously they have a different system than we do um their college preparatory program uh caters to a smaller number of students than ours does so my my
24:03 question is uh what is the answer in your opinion is it a free market system is it a revamping of uh the public system that we have um and what countries might we model that are ahead of us uh I I think we should model the countries that are at the top of the
24:23 list like uh I it’s true I mean Singapore Hong Kong they they have a culture that’s different from ours but Finland Belgium me for this show I did called Stupid in America we had gave the same kids in Belgium the test that we gave to kids in New Jersey at a top school and the kids in Belgium destroyed
24:44 the New Jersey kids uh and I asked the Belgium testers and I also asked the people who ran the international test what what’s a predictor of what countries do well and before I give the answer to that I want to just address something in your point in that Germany you talked about the college system I’ve
25:07 been talking about K through 12 education in America too it’s just to socialize all the money comes from the government I mean whether you have vouchers or whether you just have Government monopoly education it’s all coming from the government in America the colleges are not government funded largely they are largely private you had
25:27 a voucher system that helped build the colleges the GI bill that came after World War II and American colleges are not behind the rest of the world people in the rest of the world want to come to American colleges because there’s some competition there’s a voucher system and they got good because they had to compete for the best students it’s K
25:47 through 12 the Government monopoly it’s just as social more socialized in America as any place in the world that’s the problem and the people who ran the international test said the biggest predict of success are two things does the school have autonomy can they are they free to try stuff rather than being rule bound and second and most important
26:09 is the money attached to the kid in Belgium the parent could take the money and in America it’s these days 11 th per student so do the math the class of 25 kids it’s almost 300,000 per classroom not including Capital costs just operating cost think what you could do
26:29 how many good teachers you could hire for 250 thou per classroom I don’t know where the money goes it’s a Government monopoly they make money disappear it’s they create the trabant that car that’s the that’s the American school system but in the countries where the money’s attached to the kid and they can take it to a Catholic school a private school uh
26:52 secular School a government school and there’s choice and they have to compete and the principal says gee we can’t have afford to have this dead would teachers here because the parents complain well imagine that that’s how the rest of the world works and you compete in business if you offer a lousy product people go away you’re out of business but in America a Government monopoly school
27:13 system we’ve forbidden that you can’t fire the bad teachers and the money doesn’t go with the kids if the money went with the kids the best teachers would be making 200 th a year teaching big classes and kids would learn more but yes the free market competition I would argue that’s the answer and sorry to give such a long answer I’ll be quicker now from the rest
27:33 of these okay this will be our last question um uh I’m Mike there from uh California you said the uh greatest threat was uh the growth of government what do you think is the best way to limit the growth of government to return back to the ideals of the Constitution and the Bill of
27:53 Rights to vote The Big Spenders out and it’s my only hope it’ll always be an uphill climb and did she say that was the last question yep okay so thank you and good night