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Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... By John Stossel ( Harper Paperbacks )
Release Date: 2005-02-01
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List Price: $14.95
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Product Description
Working as a correspondent for 20/20 and Good Morning America, John Stossel confronted dozens of scam artists: from hacks who worked out of their basements to some of America's most powerful executives and leading politicians. His efforts shut down countless crooks -- both famous and obscure. Then he realized what the real problem was. In Give Me a Break, Stossel takes on the regulators, lawyers, and politicians who thrive on our hysteria about risk and deceive the public in the name of safety. Drawing on his vast professional experience (as well as some personal ones), Stossel presents an engaging, witty, and thought-provoking argument about the beneficial powers of the free market and free speech.
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 A farce of investigative journalism ( jmborski )
Stossel has slowly morphed since the days of Hugh Downs into a ranting polemicist who seems to be terminally irritated by even the most basic aspects of everyday life. Angry old men like he and John McCain's brother pose as concerned citizens when all they really seek is a society that serves their needs uniquely. In struggling to paint 'liberals' as the scourge of the earth, Stossel only succeeds in revealing his own neuroses in this unfortunate volume.
This book is merely an anthology of Stossel's ABC screeds in the written form, a medium that is not kind to his brand of sensationalistic, vapid and vacuous commentary. As others have pointed out, Stossel cites exceptionally narrow examples that serve only to support his hypothesis that the government has a personal vendetta against him. What's missing--apart from common sense--is any kind of rigorous investigation of the complex issues about which he rages. Stossel is not particularly well educated about many topics that he discusses, and his deficiencies are often painfully obvious. Mostly, one comes away with the impression that he has listened to just a little too much talk radio and convinced himself that anyone who voted for Bill Clinton was trying to ruin HIS life. His canonization of private enterprise seems naive at best, and one wonders if the paper used to print these books could have been saved if Stossel had only been required to read 'The Jungle' in 10th grade.
William Randolph Hearst never did smear pieces any more biased or devoid of fact than what John Stossel has compiled here.
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Common sense thoughts
A quick and enjoyable read. Liberals, and I don't consider myself one, will most certainly dislike the section on why government in general tends to mess things up. However, Mr. Stossel does criticize the private sector as well, and this gives the book a certain balance.
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 Must Read for Every American Citizen
Most Americans are what I call "default liberals". John was too, and he shows how most people, including me, have an epiphany of the faulty logic involved in modern liberlism, and make the slow, painfull transformation away from these feel-good yet harmful policies. This isn't a difficult or very acedemic book on libertarianism, but it is the best "starter" for anybody getting into politics I have ever read.
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this guy just makes sense ( djmichaelangelo )
Best book I've read in a long time. I went into it with no expectations, and came out of it agreeing with almost everything the guy said. Absolutely worth the purchase price, or even check it out from a library if you're not sure you'll like it. I can't remember a book where I had this kind of a reaction. I'd say maybe 10% of the things John Stossel wrote I disagreed with strongly (which is fine, it still gives you something to think about) and another 10% I was very much torn between two viewpoints on, but the remaining 80% of the book I found myself unconsciously shaking my head yes and steadfastly agreeing with his viewpoints completely. His ideas and observaions are just so logical and plain-sense, it's amazing no one else writes like this. Recommended times a thousand!
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An Excellent, Gentle, and Popular Introduction to Libertarianism ( sminch )
Many do not understand the phenomenon that is Libertarianism, a political philosophy which is greatly like that that of the Democratic-Republicans of our nation's Founding Fathers, the thought of John Stuart Mill, and - to a lesser and slightly more conservative degree - that of Edmund Burke. Too infrequently do Americans even breach the subject of political philosophy with any depth, primarily thanks to our general tendency for pragmatism (if we are being positive) and superficiality (in a more negative sense). Stossel's light-hearted text does not aim to be a treatise on Libertarian thought but does function - in a wholly American style - to broach the subject of this political philosophy through concrete examples in his exodus from "social liberalism" (which is often just called liberalism today) to classical liberalism, that of the Libertarian.
Stossel begins with his common, gut-level misperceptions of what the direction and aim of consumer reporting is. Though a series of stories, he came to realize that much of the sensationalizing which the media was doing (and the people were consuming) was nothing more than fear-mongering which actually diverted a great deal of attention from more important matters. In addition, this fear-mongering takes on a character of duplicity by both excoriating large entities (business and government) while calling for the same entities to take action (particularly government). From a series of such realizations, he came to realize that much common sense is found in the political philosophy of Libertarianism, in its dual pillars of laissez-faire capitalism and individual liberty. He proceeds in a non-comprehensive way to show that such freedom has been beneficial, particularly in the elimination of material poverty.
Peppered with other light considerations of the meaning of liberty, Stossel's book serves as an excellent, albeit very, very light, introduction into Libertarian thought for American readers. It is engaging and enjoyable, therefore coming with my high recommendations in an age which has lost much zeal for liberty.
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