Got freedom? Come to Ukraine!

John Stossel needs to love America or leave it.  He would be much happier here in Ukraine, where it's perfectly OK to advertise in the newspaper for a "young, attractive female secretary who is able to entertain important clients, willing to work late and accompany the Director on business trips" (wink-wink).  In job interviews it's standard practice, even at subsidiaries of Western companies, to ask women about their marital status, how many kids they have, and what age.  They want to know what a mother will do if her child gets sick: will she have to skip work?  And, "What will you do if you get pregnant?" is a very common question asked of young, married ladies in the job market.  The correct answer is understood: "Get an abortion." 

Here in Ukraine it's perfectly fine to make racial and sexual comments in the office.  Well, actually, it's not OK.  Here they euphemistically call the scourge of political correctness "good manners" -- but you won't be fired or punished for being impolite.

Here the minimum monthly salary, 605 UAH (less than $100), is so low that nobody can live on it, and no employer minds paying it.  Stossel could hire all the teenaged and elderly employees he wanted and pay them nothing.

Here in Ukraine, you're not limited to buying human organs -- you can buy a whole human: kids, women, slave laborer, you name it.  Stossel would love the smorgasbord of human trafficking on offer. 

Here school kids are not indoctrinated with sex ed. and given condoms like lollipops.  They are blissfully ignorant.  They're left to discover sex the free and natural way -- through television, trial and error, and pregnancy and STDs. 

Here in Ukraine, you have expensive, properly tested and FDA- or EMEA-approved drugs for sale, and you don't need a prescription. You also have Ukrainian, Indian, and other drugs not manufactured according to good practices.  Stossel would love the freedom here to choose cheap, risky, inneffective drugs over safe, expensive ones.

Here in Ukraine, you can park or drive anywhere you want, including sidewalks -- as long as your car is expensive enough.  Here market logic is followed: those who paid several thousand dollars on a car have more right to the road than pedestrians who pay nothing.  So, pedestrians always yield to the black Mercedes/Hummer/BMW/Porsche/Rolls Royce/Audi.

Here in Ukraine we don't have an SPCA, Bob Barker, or an animal control office telling us how many dogs and cats we can have.  Here animals practice natural, un-contracepted sex.  Just this morning, I passed a pack of seven free, shivering, hungry dogs -- all of them libertarians -- outside my office.

And here you can legally drink alcohol on the street, or in front of a kindergarten, and smoke just about anyplace.  Not to mention buy powerful fireworks and set them off anywhere you want, including public parks and apartment courtyards, on week nights.

John Stossel is living in the wrong country.  He needs to move to liberal Ukraine, where people are free.  Not happy, safe, or prosperous, but free.

Anything That's Peaceful

By John Stossel

 

This week the Left arrived in Washington, excited about the wonderful things it will do to us — I mean, for us. They always do it for us.

 

Liberals say that they, unlike those reactionaries who've held power for too long, want to give us more choices. Abortion-rights advocates want women to have the "right to choose." Gay-rights advocates want the choice of marrying someone of the same sex and serving in the military.

 

Choice is good. As a libertarian, I'm all over choice. But strangely, today, liberals are mostly about what Americans should not be allowed to choose.

 

AFL-CIO boss John Sweeney says, "[O]ur top priority is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that will restore workers' freedom to bargain for a better life".

 

That sounds nice. But it really means that workers will no longer have the privacy and safety of a secret ballot when voting on a union. If a union can round up signatures from more than half the employees at a plant, other workers will be forced to unionize, too.

 

Unorganized labor — better known as most of us, or free people making our own way — won't be helped by this coercive limiting of choice.

 

Parents have little choice when they send their children to school. Government forces everyone to pay into a system that locks most kids into a unionized monopoly.

 

If low-income parents were allowed $11,000 vouchers (that's about how much government spends per student), that would give poor parents a choice. But liberals don't want that.

 

If you take risks with your own money to build a business, liberals want to limit your choice as to what you can say, how much you pay, and whom you can hire or fire. Freedom of association? Fugeddabout it. You cannot choose to offer newcomers on-the-job training at less than $7.25 per hour. You can't choose to pay older people or pregnant women less because their medical costs may be higher. So newcomers, older people and pregnant women can't choose those jobs. Liberals don't want to liberalize that.

 

In a job interview, you better not ask about age, citizenship status, disability, or whether the person goes by "Mr." "Mrs." "Miss" or "Ms." Those questions are forbidden.

 

Liberal litigators have essentially outlawed racial and sexual comments in schools and workplaces.

 

A cashier at the Senate coffee shop was threatened with firing for addressing customers as "honey" and "baby" because one man complained it was "sexual harassment."

 

Liberal senators like Dick Durbin, John Kerry and Charles Schumer want speech limited further by the "fairness doctrine." Fairness here means depriving people of the choice of all-conservative radio.

 

And what's more liberal than voluntary exchange between consenting adults? Free trade lets everyone in the world find the best buys, no matter where they are. It gives us more things for less money. Even Paul Krugman supports free trade. But liberals don't want to allow buyers and sellers to make their own choices. Liberals want trade curtailed.

 

Even life-saving trade: 95,000 Americans are waiting for organ transplants. Thousands die while waiting. Legalizing the sale of organs would give people the choice of life, while allowing sellers to choose cash over an extra kidney.

 

But liberals don't want to let willing buyers and sellers have that choice.

 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decides what you may put in your own body. A truly liberal FDA would acknowledge that adults own their bodies and can decide for themselves what risks are appropriate. That would give consumers more choice. But liberals want the FDA to be tougher.

 

Liberals don't want you to have the choice of owning a handgun, a big car or keeping your own money so you can use it as you see fit. Liberals want to restrict our choices.

 

I'm a classical liberal. I believe people should have the freedom to do anything that is peaceful. That's truly liberal.

 

I want the word back.

 

John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20" and the author of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity."