John Stossel: Advertisers Already Collect our Data, so the NSA is Our Friend

by Ryan W. McMaken
Jun. 13, 2013

Over at Reason, John Stossel is telling libertarians to quit being all worked up about the NSA and quit worrying about privacy.

This is the same guy, of course, who has specifically said that the US Military is a force for wondrous good in the world, and that various invasions such as Bosnia and Vietnam have all been, on the whole, good things.

In other words, his position now is the same as his position then: Hey libertarians, stop criticizing the government so much.

Stossel is one of the those libertarians for whom it is fine to criticize welfare for poor people (which costs next to nothing compared to the military apparatus in this country), while the police state is always above reproach. Why, only cranks would ever think the US Government and its spies and uranium bombs are anything other than super duper!

Stossel is one of the species of libertarians who, like Charles Murray, are supposed to be these great radical libertarians, but who in reality never actually criticize the core of the state. For such people, the essence of libertarianism is to point out some waste or abuse here and there, but to never actually attack the heart of the state, which is its military-prison-taxation system. That latter stuff, they tell us, is always pretty much okay, and the best that it could possibly be at the given time, and we shouldn't waste our time criticizing it, except to maybe call for a radically huge 1% cut in spending on it. The Fourth Amendment is a dead letter? Drones incinerating American citizens without trial? Who cares? There are poor people buying lobster with food stamps! That's the real threat.