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Last night I went to the College of Charleston to attend a lecture from my favorite journalist, John Stossel. This week was Adam Smith Week at the College of Charleston’s school of business and was put on by the Initiative for Public Choice and Market Process (Facebook):

Founded in the Fall of 2008 with a generous gift from the BB&T; Charitable Foundation, the Initiative for Public Choice & Market Process is designed to examine and stimulate discussion of the following topics:
- The role of government institutions in a capitalistic society
- The relationship between government and the individual
- The relationship between political and economic freedom
- The moral structure of a free market economy

The success of the Initiative for Public Choice & Market Process depends on the support of foundations and private individuals who share its commitment to advancing the understanding and appreciation of the system of free minds and free markets. We are deeply grateful to all who support our venture.

link: Initiative for Public Choice and Market Process – College of Charleston

I’m glad to see these types of groups gaining traction at universities around the country. At Clemson (my Alma Mater) they have the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and they host similar events, and send speakers to news programs such as Stossel’s.

Anyway, the lecture was great and the Q&A; session was even better. The audience was about half students and half non-students, and so the questions covered a wide spectrum and Stossel had a good answer for each one. Stossel has a very simple premise: force doesn’t work, freedom does. He thinks the government should only serve three roles: police, justice system, national defense (stressing the “defense” part.) This rational and logical premise makes it extremely easy for him to give perfectly sensible answers on just about any question anybody could ask of him, and he showed that after his speech.

The speech itself was short and sweet and it was interesting because he spent most of the time talking about his personal story of how he started out as a typical liberal journalist and he won 19 Emmy’s by reporting on how evil corporations were screwing the little guy, but after he realized that the government did nothing to prevent these things, and in fact made them much worse, he began to change his outlook and his politics. Doing so got him shunned in his professional world of journalism and if it wasn’t for the high ratings his segments got on 20/20 they would have let him go long ago. In the political climate of Obama-mania last year they weren’t letting him do the segments he wanted to, so he finally left and went over to Fox Business where he has his own weekly 1-hour show. We are all much better off now that he’s made that move, because he gets to cover whatever topic he wants to and he gets his own hour every week.

Another interesting tidbit was that Stossel donate’s his shows to high school’s around the country who are interested in presenting materials about economics and politics in the classroom, and now as a part of Fox he can do this for free. When he was with ABC, he would actually have to purchase the rights to do this from the ABC network. Can you believe that? Those smug elitists who are always promoting the liberal propaganda, supposedly for the “common man,” would make Stossel pay them for his own segments so he could donate them to charity. What a crock.

After the speech there was a book signing and even though I’ve already read his books I bought a new copy to get signed and got my picture taken with him. Unsurprisingly, he’s a pretty down to earth and friendly guy. Most people who advocate freedom (not controlling your life for your “own good”) seem to be that way.

I’m not sure what happened to the bottom half there, I guess it was something to do with the electric cycles of the environmentally friendly lights in the lecture hall.