John Stossel Interviews Ron Paul On Legalizing Drugs And Prostitution

ABC’s John Stossel, who is probably the only outspoken pro-free market/pro-individual liberty journalists in the mainstream media, interviewed Presidential candidate Ron Paul recently, and their talk will be featured by ABC as a six-part series on ABCNews.com:

Over the last few months, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from people who wanted me to interview the unconventional Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. So this week I did.

In our hour-long interview, Paul and I discussed illegal immigration, the Iraq War, when war is necessary, the proper role of government, health care, drug laws, prostitution and more.

Despite relatively low poll numbers, Paul has had a big influence on the presidential campaign. That’s in part because he’s raised a ton of money, and in part because of the passionate following he has on the Web. It’s one reason we’re posting my interview with Paul only on the Internet, where the debate about Paul is very active. In fact, he’s the most Googled presidential candidate.

In Part One, Paul defends what have been traditionally considered two of libertarian thought’s more controversial positions — the War on Drugs and prostitution:

“I think the government’s role should not be involved in personal habits. When you defend freedom, you defend freedom of choice, and you can’t be picking and choosing how people use those freedoms . . .whether it’s personal behavior or economic behavior, I want people to have freedom of choice,” Paul asserted.

Freedom of choice, what a radical concept in a society where the government tells us what we can serve our children in school cafeterias, whether or not we can eat trans-fats, and what we can drink and when we can drink it.

Watch the whole interview for yourself:

Originally posted at Below The Beltway