ABC's John Stossel - Thoughts on Liberty

On May 26, 1998 ABC aired a special John Stossel report: Sex, Drugs and Consenting Adults. Thousands of email responses were received by Stossel and he forwarded the following message to those who wrote:

Thank you for your comments on Liberty. Thousands of you have e-mailed us, so I regret I cannot respond to your specific questions (or compliments, or criticisms). But, if you would like to order a tape or a transcript, call (800)-225 5222. Ask for a copy of "Sex, Drugs and Consenting Adults" which aired 5/26/98.

The following are reputable organizations that have more information on subjects discussed in the program:

Drug Policy Foundation: http://www.dpf.org

Lindesmith Center: http://www.lindesmith.org

Reason Magazine; Reason Foundation: http://www.reason.org

Institute For Humane Studies: http://mason.gmu.edu/~ihs/

Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org

Peter McWilliam's book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" can be found in its entirety at http://www.consenting.org

Finally, my top 10 thoughts about liberty (maybe you'll send back your favorites):

1. "Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." ­­Friedrich Nietzsche

2. "Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." ­­Seneca

3. "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." ­­Thomas Paine

4. "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ­­Benjamin Franklin

5. "The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." ­­Woodrow Wilson

6. "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force." ­­George Washington

7. "The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits." ­­Thomas Jefferson

8. "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients." ­­Edmund Burke

9. "Republic . . . it means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose." ­­John Wayne

10. "We can foresee a time when . . . the only people at liberty will be prison guards who will then have to lock up one another." ­­Albert Camus