Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program Freedom Watch is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of the libertarian movement. There’s never been anything like it and if it were to break out to the Fox News television channel, it would constitute nothing less than a revolutionary development in American politics.
Take a look at the guests that Napolitano has been having on his show: Lew Rockwell, Bob Higgs, James Bovard, Paul Armentano, Ron Paul, Roger Pilon, Tom Woods, Pete Eyre, Nick Gillespie, David Boaz, Peter Schiff, Walter Block, and many more. Every one of them is a major figure in the libertarian movement. I myself have been on Napolitano’s show twice.
How many times have you seen any of these guests on the mainstream television talk shows or even on the cable television talk shows? My hunch is that your answer is “Rarely, if ever.”
For years, conservatives and liberals have played their little games of pretending to have debates over policy, acting as if there were fundamental philosophical differences between the two. In actuality, the debates have always been over which form of statism is preferable — conservative statism or liberal statism.
You’ll rarely find either a conservative or a liberal challenging, at a fundamental level, the role the federal government plays in American life — (1) the role of a paternalistic nanny who takes care of people’s retirement, health care, education, food, housing, and money; (2) the role of protector from drug dealers, illegal immigrants, terrorists, communists, corporations, the rich, greedy people, and other scary creatures; (3) the role of an overseas imperial power, engaging in foreign wars of aggression and occupations, coups, embargoes, sanctions, torture, and assassination; and (4) the role it plays as infringer of people’s liberties here at home, through the denial of such fundamental procedural rights as due process, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and others.
The last thing that conservatives and liberals have wanted on their television shows on a regular basis has been libertarians, for two reasons:
One, they don’t want people interfering with their little game, one in which they argue over how best to make their welfare-warfare paradigm work and which statists, Republican or Democrat, should be running it.
Two, they do not know how to handle, in an intellectual sense, libertarian arguments that call for the dismantling, not the reform, of their welfare-warfare programs.
Along comes Napolitano and with his Internet program Freedom Watch has broken the dam by flooding his show with libertarian commentators. All of sudden, people are having the opportunity to watch and listen to hard-core, pure libertarian analysis and commentary on current events from leading libertarian thinkers, which blasts the statism of both conservatives and liberals to kingdom-come. And I know I’m biased, but Napolitano’s show is one heckuva lot more interesting and exciting than the shows run by the conservatives and liberals.
I can’t help but wonder how Napolitano’s show is being received by Fox News executives. The top executives at Fox have to be paying attention to what he is doing on the Internet, since he’s doing it under the Fox banner. Moreover, it’s clear to me that Napolitano would love to have his Internet show elevated to a Fox News television show.
We all know that Fox News is conservative-oriented, big time. But by the same token, they’ve just brought libertarian John Stossel on board, and it’s clear that Napolitano is highly respected and held in high esteem by his conservative colleagues at Fox.
My hunch is that in their staff meetings, there is one segment of Fox News executives exclaiming, “We’ve got to can Napolitano for featuring libertarians and libertarianism on the Internet” while another segment is exclaiming, “We’ve got to give Napolitano his own show so he can feature libertarians and libertarianism on television.”
If Fox News were to decide to put Napolitano on the air, his show would undoubtedly shake up the nice, little comfortable world of the statists. Both conservatives and liberals would undoubtedly be stunned, shell-shocked, and dumbfounded over how to deal with a television show filled with purist, hard-hitting libertarians challenging the fundamental premises of the welfare-warfare state that is so beloved to conservatives and liberals.