How typical of government. Trade is an activity in which two people realize mutual gains through voluntary exchange. It's win-win -- or else it doesn't occur. Commerce is cooperation. It's the essence of civilization.

Yet the FTC likens trade to a wild animal that someone -- government, of course -- must control.

I thought the Microsoft prosecution was just the usual excesses of regulation-loving Democrats, but apparently not. Even with Republicans in charge, bureaucrats bully businesses.

A year ago, the FTC ordered Whole Foods to stop its merger with Wild Oats Markets. A federal judge refused to go along, and the merger was completed. This summer, however, an appeals court reversed that judge, and now the FTC has reopened its case.

The FTC believes that since "Whole Foods and Wild Oats [were] each other's closest competitors in premium natural and organic supermarkets," the merger means "higher prices, reduced quality and fewer choices for consumers".

But why do the bureaucrats look only at Wild Oats? The supermarket industry is crowded. Even the submarket for natural and organic foods has vigorous competition.

I understand why people think antitrust law is necessary. They fear that businesses will collude to raise prices. But if the government has not created barriers to entry, even a lone seller of a product can't charge whatever he wants because unwarranted high prices and profits will draw competition. What counts is not the number of firms in a market but the potential for competition.

The only "antitrust" policy we need is repeal of all government barriers to entry. Government can't assure competition. Competition happens when government stays out of the way.

The FTC lawyers believe that the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger is costly to consumers. But they seem oblivious to the costs their own policies impose. As Mackey told me:

"Whole Foods has now spent over $35 million in legal expenses battling the FTC ... We do not know how much of taxpayers' money the FTC has wasted. With the FTC continuing to bring anti-trust actions, we will spends tens of millions in additional legal expenses and waste enormous management time dealing with the FTC instead of creating value for our customers.

"This thing will now likely drag on for many years into the future before all the legal options are exhausted by both sides."

Taxpayers and consumers will pick up that tab, just as they did when the Justice Department spent 13 years prosecuting IBM, before finally dropping monopoly charges in 1982. What a waste of time and money. If IBM had monopoly power, why wasn't it able to dominate the PC market? And why is it now smaller than Microsoft?

The problem Mackey cites goes beyond the FTC. Despite media talk about the Bush administration's "handcuffing" regulatory agencies, regulators pass more rules and file more lawsuits every month. After all, they're regulators. If they're don't regulate, they're not doing their job.

Now that the media is screaming "economic crisis" and politicians of both parties are bashing business, I assume we'll see even more destructive regulation.

If America's professional bureaucrats have their way, they will regulate until they kill off just about everything America creates.

Had actual private companies performed these activities, they would have been subject to market checks. But they were not. The results were predictable.

Now that it's all tumbling down, the politicians and pundits blame the free market.

It's not simply misunderstanding. It's demagoguery by people who will never admit that their "progressive" social policies have spawned a taxpayer bill that boggles the mind.

This is a story not of private enterprise but of cynical political opportunism. Moral hazard -- the poisonous mix of private profits and taxpayer-covered losses -- is what you get when politicians indulge their hubris to redesign society. The bailout of those companies holding bad mortgages -- big-business socialism -- sets us up for the next crisis.

Maybe the Republican presidential candidate will dissent? Not a chance:

John McCain says, "We are going to fight the greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street. These actions [leading to crisis] stem from failed regulation, reckless management and a casino culture on Wall Street. ... We need strong and effective regulation ... ".

He proposes a new bureaucracy, the Mortgage and Financial Institutions Trust (MFI), which he says will "provide troubled institutions with an orderly process to identify bad loans, provide funding and eventually sell them at a profit. ... The MFI will supervise the sale of loan assets at market prices and purchase them as necessary" (emphasis added).

A government agency is going buy bad loans and make a profit selling them. Give me a break!

Irresponsibility induced by government-created perverse incentives is the culprit. For decades politicians of both parties have relieved big companies of the responsibility that market discipline would have imposed. The promise -- explicit or implicit -- to bail out companies "too big to fail" weakens market discipline. That invites recklessness.

What if the government cut Freddie, Fannie, Bear, AIG and the others loose and let them do what other businesses do on hard times: renegotiate with creditors and revalue assets? Would there be another Great Depression? Not likely. What turned a recession into the Great Depression was the Federal Reserve's contraction of the money supply. I doubt they'd make that mistake twice.

Public officials say the big companies must be saved to prevent a devastating credit "lock." Really? Without a federal bailout, lending wouldn't have resumed? The market wouldn't have sorted it out? Prices wouldn't have found a more solid floor? We'll never know.

We do know that the taxpayer will buy -- Probably for too much money, because the private sellers will fool the government managers -- at least $700 billion in "illiquid" assets. Where will this money come from:
taxation, borrowing or the printing press? What will that do to our economic well-being?

Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as "showing leadership," so we're surely in for a new round of government interventions. Watch for the equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. There'll be much posturing about how the new regulations "will keep this from ever happening again," but that's more nonsense because the root problem is not lack of regulation. It's government social engineering of the housing market, which will be unchanged.

This is the path to stagnation and poverty. As Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek taught, markets are too complicated for planners to know enough to plan them. The relevant information, scattered unspoken among billions of market participants, is beyond the bureaucrats' reach.

We do need protection from reckless businessmen. But there is only one way to provide that: market discipline. That means: no privileges, and no bailouts.

"I grew up in segregation," Steele told me. "So I really know what racism is. I went to segregated school. I bow to no one in my knowledge of racism, which is one of the reasons why I say white privilege is not a problem."

Steele claims, "the real problem is black irresponsibility. ... Racism is about 18th on a list of problems that black America faces."

Whites' preoccupation with guilt and compensation such as affirmative action is actually a subtle form of racism, writes Steele in his book "White Guilt". "One of the things that is clear about white privilege, and so many of the arguments for diversity that pretend to be compensatory, is that they advantage whites. They make the argument that whites can solve [black people's] problems. ... The problem with that is ... you reinforce white supremacy. ... And black dependency.

"White privilege is a disingenuous idea," he adds. In fact, now there is "minority privilege."

"If I'm a black high school student today, there are white American institutions, universities, hovering over me to offer me opportunities. Almost every institution has a diversity committee. Every country club now has a diversity committee. I've been asked to join so many clubs, I can't tell you. ... I don't have to even look for opportunities in many cases, they come right to me."

Of course, there is still racism in America. At ABC News we've aired hidden-camera video showing sales clerks spying on black customers, cab drivers passing blacks to pick up whites and employers favoring white-sounding names.

Steele says those are minor problems.

"The fact is," he adds, "we got a raw deal in America. We got a much better deal now. But we can't access it unless we take ... responsibility for getting there ourselves."

He makes good points. White privilege does still exist, but Barack Obama's success is more evidence that it's not the whole story. There are plenty of people in America who want to vote for someone because he is black. Or female.

It's not politically correct to say that. Hillary Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro said she wouldn't have been nominated for vice president in 1984 were she not a woman and that Obama would not have been doing so well were he not black. "Could I have said ... his experience is what puts him there? No. Could I say because his stand on issues have distinguished him? No ... If Obama were a white man, he would not be in this position. ... He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

For saying that, she was repeatedly called racist. The heat got so intense, Ferraro had to resign from Clinton's finance committee, and Clinton disavowed her remarks.

There is black privilege -- and white privilege. It's time to stop complaining about past discrimination and to treat people as individuals, not as members of a certain race.

Politicians always promise that their programs will create jobs. It's used to justify building palatial sports stadiums for wealthy team owners. Alaska Rep. Don Young claimed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" would create jobs (http://tinyurl.com/6jq623). The fallacy is the same in every case: Even if the program creates jobs building bridges or windmills, it necessarily prevents other jobs from being created. This is because government spending merely diverts money from private projects to government projects.

Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there. Overlooking this fact is known as the broken-window fallacy (http://tinyurl.com/ydasa2). The French economist Frederic Bastiat pointed out that a broken shop window will create work for a glassmaker, but that work comes only at the expense of the cook or tailor the shopkeeper would have patronized if he didn't have to replace the window.

Creating jobs is not difficult for government officials. Pharaohs created thousands of jobs by building pyramids. Our government could create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them up. Would actual wealth be created? Of course not. It would be destroyed. It's like arguing the hurricanes create jobs. After all, the destruction is followed by rebuilding. But does anyone seriously believe that replacing destroyed buildings creates wealth?

Look at Obama's plan. His website says:

"Obama will strategically invest $150 billion over 10 years to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low emissions coal plants, advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid. The plan will also invest in America's highly skilled manufacturing workforce and manufacturing centers to ensure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer the green technologies that will be in high demand throughout the world." (http://tinyurl.com/6rx4vm).

Note that word "strategically." It is there to suggest that Obama knows how best to "invest" the $150 billion. (Of course it is not his money, and he'll have none of his own at risk, so from his perspective, it won't really be investment.) But how does he know that the things he names ought to get the money? Will he give it to cronies of his campaign contributors? Will he appoint Al Gore to pick grant recipients? Lobbyists will make a fortune steering "green" inventors and promoters to the $150 billion.

Politicians have a lousy record trying to make "strategic investments." President Jimmy Carter's Synthetic Fuels Corporation cost taxpayers at least $19 billion but failed to give us alternative fuels (http://tinyurl.com/5ex7v5). In the 1950s Japan's supposedly omniscient Ministry of International Trade and Investment rebuffed Sony and was sure the country should have just one car producer (http://tinyurl.com/6kpbez).

Neither Gore nor Obama can know how the money should best be invested. Investing is about predicting the future, and the future is always uncertain. We know from experience that people who have their own money at risk -- who face a profit-and-loss test and possible bankruptcy -- are much better predictors than people who play with other people's money. Just compare North and South Korea.

One reason decentralized markets are preferable to government central planning is that human beings are fallible. Mistakes are inevitable. Some investments will be errors. Mistakes in the market tend to be on a comparatively small scale. If one company invests in plug-in hybrids and it goes bust, only a relatively few people suffer. The assets of the bankrupt firm pass into more capable hands.

But decisions by government, especially the federal government, affect all of us. When government makes a mistake, the bureaucracy can't go bankrupt. Instead, it will use its failure to justify increased appropriations in the next budget.

If "green jobs" make so much sense, the market will create them. They will be created by private entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to profit from winning investments. The best ideas will rise to the top, and green energy will gradually replace coal and oil.

If politicians were serious about creating jobs and cleaner technologies, they would step aside and let the free market go to work.

It makes the obvious point that 18-21-year-olds are "deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer."

States started raising the drinking age to 21 in 1984, after Congress passed a law that stopped federal highway money from going to states that kept the age at 18. Curiously, the law was backed by President Reagan, a self-proclaimed advocate of federalism (http://tinyurl.com/6yaq6t). Federalism presumes that we'll get better laws if states are free to compete in making public policy. Federal mandates kill useful experimentation by enacting one-size-fits-all policies.

The college presidents make a lot of sense. Forbidding things like underage drinking or smoking marijuana doesn't stop them from happening. The activity is just driven underground, where it is less subject to constructive social convention.

Of course, the Amethyst Initiative statement was angrily denounced by the usual activist groups that believe the answer to every problem is strict laws. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) said the college presidents "have signed on to a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of 21 law" (http://tinyurl.com/58j9y4). MADD cites a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimate that the higher drinking age "reduced traffic fatalities involving drivers 18 to 20 years old by 13 percent and has saved an estimated 25,509 lives since 1975" (http://tinyurl.com/3z2uwp).

MADD also claims that "In most countries with lower drinking ages, intoxication is much more common among young people than in the United States" (http://tinyurl.com/4yhfho).

But does the "21 Law" really saves lives or reduce intoxication? Choose Responsibility responds, "Depending on where you look, you'll find many different numbers, all attributed to 'science.' What 'science'? In fact, the statistic(s) cited are the result of a simple mathematical formula ... [that] takes 13 percent of the difference between one year's alcohol-related traffic fatalities and the next and attributes the product to the 21-year-old drinking age. Recent research has called the consistent application of this formula into question."

Even if MADD's claims are right, McCardell counters that studies also show that those students who drink do so in more dangerous ways than they might if drinking could be done in the open (http://tinyurl.com/6ntms2).

Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty adds: "[C]ulture has a lot to do with how people respond to newfound freedoms or possibilities. ... Where the use of alcohol is not a taboo that can become part and parcel of a young-adult 'rebellion' experience, it seems less likely that binge drinking will function as a gateway to adulthood" (http://tinyurl.com/4ch4re).

I agree. We grow into adulthood, but laws like the 21-year-old drinking age presume that individuals change from child to adult at the stroke of midnight on their 21st birthdays. That's nonsense.

What about MADD's claim that intoxication is more common in countries with lower drinking ages? It's not true, says anthropology professor Dwight Heath of Brown University: "In countries where people start to drink at an early age, alcohol is not a mystical, magical thing," and they are not prone to "drink to get drunk ..." (http://tinyurl.com/6zfddd). He adds that "Several years ago, a study at the University of North Carolina found that '[D]rinking with parents appears to have a protective effect on general drinking trends.' ...

"The fear that teaching kids to be responsible drinkers will only teach them to be heavy drinkers has been unfounded in Italy, Spain and other 'wine cultures.'" (http://tinyurl.com/5j5y5b).

Bring back federalism.

Of course, as many readers noted, the federal government, by doing things like prohibiting drilling in on- and off-shore areas that may have oil reserves, makes it more expensive or even impossible to produce energy in this country. Those policies should go, but that would still not bring self-sufficiency. Our demand for oil is too great.

And anyway, if the economics of oil production favor foreign over domestic producers, it still makes sense to buy the cheaper product. It wouldn't matter how much shale oil we have in the United States.

Readers correctly point out that because governments control much oil production, there is no global free market. But it does not follow that market forces don't work. There are many sources of oil in the world and many buyers. Supply and demand still set the price globally. It is foolish not to buy at the lowest price.

Many readers agreed with the one who said: "The short-term goal here is not complete energy independence. ... The goal is partial independence from those countries, many of whose citizens hate us and would do us harm."

"Partial independence" sounds like partial pregnancy. People don't have to like each other to benefit from trade. Those who sell us oil need the money so they can turn it into food, automobiles and other things. Refusing to sell because they don't like us would be self-destructive. Anyway, all the world's oil ends up in the same bathtub. If one foreign source stopped selling oil to the United States, it would sell to someone else, and that buyer would then have an incentive to sell to us.

Several readers argued that "Energy independence doesn't mean opposition to trade. If we ever become energy independent, we'll still have the option of buying energy on the world market."

Of course. But this misses the bigger point. To even attempt to achieve energy independence, the government will have to plan the energy sector. Considering how pervasive energy is throughout the economy, this is a recipe for full central planning and a step toward poverty and tyranny.

"Why not keep all that $720 billion [we spend to import oil] in the United States of America?" was a sentiment expressed by many. But that reveals a poor understanding of world trade. When we trade dollars to foreigners for oil, they have to do something with those dollars. They don't stuff them in mattresses. (If they did, it would mean we got free oil.) They buy American products. (U.S. exports are soaring.) Or they invest in businesses here. Or they sell the dollars to someone else who buys American products or invests in the United States.

If we stop buying from abroad, foreigners will have fewer dollars with which to buy American products or to invest. That would hurt us.

Many readers think that energy independence would produce jobs for Americans. But the idea that money spent abroad means fewer jobs here is just plain wrong. If Americans don't produce energy, they will produce something else. The number of jobs is not fixed. There is always work to do.

If Americans can produce competitive forms of energy -- without government subsidies -- great! But if others can produce energy more cheaply, we'd be crazy not to buy it and use the savings to make other things to improve our lives.

Trade also saves us money. "We import energy for a reason," says the Cato Institute's energy expert, Jerry Taylor, "It's cheaper than producing it here at home. A governmental war on energy imports will, by definition, raise energy prices".

Anyway, a "domestic energy only" policy (call it "Drain America First"?) is a fantasy. America's demand for oil is too great for us to supply ourselves. Electricity we could provide. Not with windmills and solar panels -- they are not yet close to providing enough -- but coal and nuclear power could produce America's electricity.

But cars need oil. We don't have nearly enough.

That doesn't keep the presidential candidates from preying on the public's economic ignorance.

"I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lexington Project -- named for the town where Americans asserted their independence once before," John McCain said. "This nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025".

Barack Obama, promising to "set America on path to energy independence," is upset that we send millions to other countries. "They get our money because we need their oil".

His concern that "they get our money" is echoed in commercials funded by Republican businessman T. Boone Pickens, who wants government subsidies for alternative energy. He tries to scare us by saying, "$700 billion are leaving this country to foreign nations every year -- the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind."

Don't Obama and Pickens realize that we get something useful for that money? It's not a "transfer"; it's a win-win transaction, like all voluntary trade. Who cares if the sellers live in a foreign country? When two parties trade, each is better off -- or the exchange would never have been made. We want the oil more than the money. They want the money more than the oil. They need us as much as we need them.

And Obama is wrong when he implies that America imports most of its oil from the Mideast. Most of it comes from Canada and Mexico.

McCain and Obama talk constantly about how much they will "invest" -- with money taken from the taxpayers, of course -- to achieve energy independence. "[W]e can provide loan guarantees and venture capital to those with the best plans to develop and sell biofuels on a commercial market," Obama said.

What makes Obama think he's qualified to pick the "best plans"? It's the robust competition of the free market that reveals what's best. Obama's program would preempt the only good method we have for learning which form of energy is best.

Has he learned nothing from the conceits of his predecessors? Jimmy Carter, saying that achieving energy independence was the "moral equivalent of war," called for "the most massive peacetime commitment of funds ... to develop America's own alternative". Then he wasted billions of our tax dollars on the utterly failed "synfuel" program.

McCain promises a $300-million prize to whoever develops a battery for an electric car. But the free market already provides plenty of incentive to invent a better battery. As George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux writes, "Anyone who develops such a device will earn profits dwarfing $300 million simply by selling it on the market. There's absolutely no need for any such taxpayer-funded prize".

Central energy planning and government-funded prizes are economic idiocy.

But they're not.

This year, Kansas City DJs Max Floyd and Tanna Guthrie sued their radio station for firing them.

"The reason for firing was [that] they're changing formats, which they didn't really," Max Floyd told me for my "Give Me a Break" segment.

"Why wouldn't they keep us?" Tanna Guthrie asks. "We've been there, loyal with the company, and they didn't change the music a lot."

Discrimination lawsuits like theirs are common today. They create nasty, unintended consequences: Older workers find it more difficult to get hired since companies are reluctant to hire people who could become lawsuit age-discrimination bombs. I'm told some companies set aside $100,000 for legal fees and settlement money for every older worker who isn't doing a good job. What a waste.

Lawyer Murray Schwartz has won millions suing companies for age discrimination. He told me, "A company shouldn't be able to say, 'A 36-year-old fellow would do it better than the 52-year-old fellow.'"

They just shouldn't be allowed?

"Never. And that's what the law says."

The law does. But the law can be an ass, and American law contradicts itself. FBI agents must retire at 57, airline pilots by 65. But it's illegal for ABC to fire me if my boss thinks I'm too old?

Bruce Morrow has been a radio star for decades. When the Beatles came to America, "Cousin Brucie" introduced them.

Three years ago, he was fired. Abruptly.

He was furious, but Morrow has a new perspective on the issue because he's owned radio stations.

"I've fired several disc jockeys. We are in a business of change. Many people on the radio station who have worked there 15, 20 years don't fit there anymore. They might not sound, age-wise, proper. There's ethics here. But [then] there's reality."

American labor law clashes with reality. The government once even tried to force Hooters, that restaurant chain famous for sexy waitresses, to hire men to wait on tables. Only after Hooters mocked the government by running ads depicting a hairy Hooters man in a skimpy waitress outfit did the EEOC lawyers drop their case.

Protecting older workers interferes with the market's "creative destruction", the dynamic process that allows businesses to grow though constant change. That growth creates new opportunity for other workers, including older workers.

Roger Pilon of the libertarian Cato Institute says workers should stop thinking they own their jobs: "Freedom permits unfairness, and free markets sometimes encourage it; but what's the alternative? Since the categories in which discrimination might be prohibited are in principle infinite, down that road is the death of individual choice."

Pilon asks the basic question: "Whose business is it? Suppose you're an Italian restaurateur and you want to have only Italian men as your waiters because that's the ambience you want. Shouldn't you be able to do that?"

I would think so, but American law says no.

We don't need laws against discrimination. We need a free, competitive marketplace. Competition is better at punishing sexists, racists and "ageists" than clumsy laws. If a boss discriminated against, say, women, he would be demolished by a competitor who obtains better workers by hiring the women the first boss turned away. If an entire group of bosses turned women away, then men's wages would be bid up over women's, and a new competitor would defeat the discriminators by hiring only women.

Schwartz indignantly asked me, "Who has the right to say that you should stop working when you're 50 or 52 or 53? The boss?"

I said yes, the guy who's paying you ought to get to decide.

"No," he said. "You own your job as long as you're performing effectively."

That's the attitude of today's parasitic labor lawyers: You "own" your job. And this attitude is winning in the arena of public opinion. Never have I received such consistently hostile e-mail.

"I hope you get fired."

"You think that mid-50s is too old to hold a job?"

"Give me a Break! Unless you plan on supporting me for the next 10 years, I suggest you revise your segment."

Give me a break. I didn't say older workers ought to be fired. Heck, I'm 61. Viewers are so invested in job "rights" that they missed the point about freedom of association, private property, an employer's right to control a business he created, etc.

Good intentions are irrelevant. Public policy always has unintended bad consequences. One reason France has nasty riots over high unemployment is France's restrictive labor laws. French employers think, "I don't want to hire someone whom I'll never be able to fire."

Schwartz says repealing the worker-protection laws would be a "disaster."

No, innovation-stifling laws and lawsuits are the disaster.

When I was 11, the innocent movie "Pillow Talk" was attacked because Rock Hudson and Doris Day argue about "bedroom problems" (http://tinyurl.com/6fp8kx). Reviews said, it "comes close to the forbidden border."

Today, parents would be relieved to find their kids watching "Pillow Talk." The PG movie "Hairspray" features a flasher and jokes about teen pregnancy. Sex is a regular storyline on "family" TV shows.

This is terrible for kids, says Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (www.frc.org).

"They are being exposed to sex and to talk about sex before they're even old enough to even think about having sex," he told me in my recent "20/20" special "Sex in America" (http://tinyurl.com/5bczsx).

"Young people who watch a lot of sexual content on television have distorted attitudes about sexuality. That it must be that everybody's who's not married is going around having sex all the time and having kinky sex in all kinds of strange situations."

Complaints from groups like Sprigg's inspire politicians to make noises about "protecting" America by banning such sex from the public square, even if it means legislating some of our liberty away. Sen. Joe Lieberman promised action to stay "the rising tide of sex, violence and vulgarity," which he says "has coarsened our culture."

Our culture has become coarser. Young people swear loudly in public, have vulgar tattoos and wear jeans that keep getting lower. Advertising shoves sex in our faces.

In fact, today, sex is more pervasive than my parents ever imagined it could be.

Sprigg says it's a reason for problems like "the rise of sexually transmitted diseases [and] the increase in out-of-wedlock pregnancies and births."

But where is that increase in out-of-wedlock births, etc.? We were surprised to find that although STDs are up and the '60s sexual revolution brought an increase in teen pregnancy, over the past 10 to 15 years, the rape rate, the divorce rate and the percentage of teens having premarital sex have steadily declined.

I told Sprigg the good news.

"I'm not sure I accept the premise that negative effects aren't happening," he said.

Sometimes Sprigg's group reaches far to make a point. It issued a press release lamenting bad news from the Centers for Disease Control about an increase in out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancies.

But that increase was a one-year aberration from the 10-year trend. I told Sprigg his release was deceitful.

His answer was telling: "It has been going down, and the rate[s] of out-of-wedlock births and of teen births have been going down. But until they go down to zero, we have to keep trying to promote these positive values in our culture."

I assume many people reading this agree with Sprigg. After my TV special, I got hateful e-mail: "Stossel you are disgusting. ... " "[Your TV show] added fuel to the fire for the demise of our society."

But let's be realistic, says family therapist Dr. Marty Klein, author of "America's War on Sex" (http://tinyurl.com/5lpjtf). Sex isn't going away, and it's not poisoning our culture.

"The truth is, children think about sex whether we want them to or not. There are groups of people out there who are devoted to scaring the heck out of Americans. ... I think it makes some people feel good because they say, aha, there's the enemy, and if only we could do something about that, everything would be better."

The truth is, "doing something" means more government. And more government doesn't make life better. If government leaves us alone, we will survive crude sex in the public square.

Henkel and his website, TruthBearer, (www.truthbearer.org), campaign against the media and others who lump criminals like Jeffs with all polygamy.

Henkel won't reveal his own family situation. In Maine, where he lives, even purporting to have more than one wife is against the law. Henkel complains that American laws are hypocritical.

"Someone like a Hugh Hefner will have a successful television show with three live-in girlfriends! And that's all OK, and he's making great money, and that's all fine and great entertainment. But suddenly, if that man was to marry them, then suddenly he's a criminal. That's insane!"

Many people, when they hear the word "polygamy," think of fundamentalist Mormons living in cults, but the truth is that there's lots of polygamy in America that has nothing to do with that. First of all, polygamy was banned by the mainstream Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1890 and is grounds for excommunication. For my "20/20" special, we interviewed Jewish and evangelical Christian polygamists. Henkel's website is subtitled "Organization for Christian Polygamy." He estimates that there are 100,000 polygamists in America.

Ten years ago, University of Georgia Professor Patricia Dixon thought polygamy exploited women. Then she embarked on a study of it.

"I was transformed by the experience."

She spent years living with different polygamous communities. She was surprised to find that polygamy was not about men exploiting women.

"It's female-centered. The women are the ones who are benefiting. ..."

Wouldn't most people say it's about the men getting more sex with more women?

"It's not about another notch on your belt or anything like that. It really is the women who really promote this idea."

Plural marriage is common around the world. In the United States most get married in religious ceremonies but keep quiet about it because what they do is illegal.

The families we met wonder why what they do is illegal. Clearly it's wrong if an older man arranges marriages of young kids, but when adults choose to live this kind of life, why is that evil?

"Because we need marriage for the good of society. I think if we were to see this across the range of society the effect would be negative," Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (www.frc.org) told me. He added, "Slavery and polygamy were the twin relics of barbarism. Those are barbaric societies that we've tried to move beyond."

Plenty of religious leaders agree with Sprigg, but Mark Henkel isn't buying it. "If they're saying that's immoral, they're calling the greatest heroes in the Bible ... immoral! ... Saying that Abraham, with his three wives, was immoral. Jacob had four wives. David had seven known named wives before Bathsheba."

Prince Ben-Israel, who has four wives, calls plural marriage a civil-rights issue. "Who is this government that's in somebody's bedroom? ... It was illegal for me to marry a white woman at one time. ... It was illegal for me to vote at one time. And if I had accepted somebody else's definition of what was right and wrong, I would still be riding in the back of the bus.

"We're not saying this is for everybody. Everybody don't like football and basketball or tennis. But those who do oughta be free to do this."

Klein says it's part of "America's War on Sex" (http://tinyurl.com/5lpjtf).

"American society attempts to restrict what adults can do, what adults can see ... more than any other industrial country."

Ken Giles was jogging in a park in Johnson City, Tenn., when, as he put it, "nature called." He went off the trail to go take care of business. Then an undercover agent "put the badge in my face and told me that I was under arrest. I just thought I was in trouble for urinating in public."

It was much more humiliating than that. The park was the site of a police crackdown on gay men using the park for sex. But the police went beyond arrests. Before anyone was convicted, they posted the names, addresses and photos of the men.

Giles's wife saw his picture on the news. Then his employer fired him. "When I lost my job ... my wife was so upset that she had a ... a major heart attack."

Another man named by the police killed himself.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (www.frc.org) says he has no sympathy for such sex offenders. "There's not a presumption of confidentiality when you're arrested and charged," he told me.

It's intrusive enough when police arrest someone in a public place, but worse when the police turn their sights indoors, to places where people choose to be exposed to sex.

Chippendales (www.chippendales.com), the male burlesque show, has toured the country for years. Their show is not as racy as you might think. The men dance, show off their bodies and flirt with some women in the audience. There's no nudity.

Chippendales never had a problem with authorities -- until it came to Lubbock, Texas. Ten minutes before their show, the police told the dancers, "Don't ever simulate a sex act."

The dancers did their usual show and then ventured out into the crowd. The police then shut down the show and took the dancers to jail.

The crowd was angry. "City council sucks!" the audience shouted.

Mayor David Miller told me, "In the judgment of our police officers that night, they violated one portion or more of [the city's] ordinance."

What were the police protecting willing adult customers from?

"From these types of activities spilling over into their neighborhood."

Within a week of the Chippendales arrest, three murders occurred in Lubbock. Wouldn't those police officers have been better used elsewhere?

Some states have laws that creep right into the bedroom. In Alabama, legislators banned the sale of sex toys. That upset Dave Smith, whose wife owns Pleasures, "Your One Stop Romance Shop" (http://tinyurl.com/5wg44l).

"In the state of Alabama I can buy a gun. I can carry it in my pocket. ... But if I buy this [sex toy], someone could get arrested!" Smith said.

The ACLU (www.aclu.org/) helped challenge the law. But an appeals court ruled that the politicians have a "legitimate legislative interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex" -- in other words, masturbation -- because that may be "detrimental to the health and morality of the State."

Oddly, Pleasures is still in business because the law makes an exception if a sex toy is sold for a medical purpose . To buy a vibrator, customers need only answer yes to a questionnaire asking things like, "Have difficulty having an orgasm?"

I asked the Family Research Council's Sprigg whom the government protects when it closes down sex shops.

"The government is protecting actually the people who patronize those shops because I don't think it's in their interest to use pornography and sex toys."

Give me a break.

Last year, the town made half a million dollars from such fines. Some drivers told us it "seems like a moneymaking scam.

I don't know if that's true, but when some angry motorists complained to Heather Catallo, reporter for Detroit's ABC affiliate, she took her cameras out to see if the cops themselves stopped at the stop signs. Most didn't.

Her expose caused a ruckus in town. The mayor hired a new police commissioner, who told me the cops might have been on emergency calls. "They don't necessarily have to have their lights and sirens on," Commissioner William Dwyer said.

I told him the tape showed police cars rolling through stop signs on the way back to the police station.

"Did some officers make mistakes? Perhaps so," he said.

Dwyer denied the tickets were a moneymaking scam. He said he didn't think it odd that Kanapsky wrote thousands of tickets. "It's not unusual for a traffic officer to write 10 to 20 traffic violations a day, if not more."

Please. I'm all for highway safety, but I suspect that America's roads have too many rules, and that gives cops too much arbitrary power to harass people or profit off them. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse said, "The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced".

I bet most Americans roll through stop signs. I do. It makes for a smoother ride, and it saves gas.

"ABC News" put cameras by stop signs in Warren, Mich., and in New York City. The video showed that in Warren, 72 percent of drivers did not come to a complete stop. In New York, 82 percent kept going.

Warren and other towns probably have too many stop signs. There's no proof that more signs save lives. Studies show that sometimes installing stop signs lowers accident rates, but in some cases more accidents occurred after signs were installed.

In this month's Atlantic, John Staddon argues that that America's omnipresent stop signs make us less safe. He writes, "Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: Stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. ... [T]he overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving -- instead, they look for signs. ...

"The four-way stop deserves special recognition as a masterpiece of counterproductive public-safety efforts. Where should the driver look?"

One Dutch town experimented by getting rid of most of its traffic signs. The result? Fewer accidents and fewer injuries.

Drivers look out for people instead of signs, and they negotiate their way through town.

Remember the stop sign in Warren, Mich., where Kanapsky wrote many of his tickets? It's been changed to a yield sign. One result: fewer accidents.

Police say, "[B]etween Jan. 16, 2008, and May 21, 2008, there have been no accidents reported. During that same time frame in 2007, there were four crashes reported." Good. Let's get rid of more signs.

And to all the cops who eagerly punish us for doing what they do, give me a break.

What has caused so much confusion about the Amendment is its preface: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state ..."

In striking down Washington, D.C.'s three-decade-old handgun ban, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the preface merely "announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia" by the new national government. "The prefatory clause," he continued, "does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting."

But for the four dissenters, the preface limits the right to keep and bear arms to military purposes. In their view, if the Framers of the Second Amendment wanted private individuals to have guns for hunting and self-defense, they would have said so.

Justice John Paul Stevens points to "the Second Amendment's omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense."

I suppose one could argue that the omission indicates the Framers of the Constitution didn't mean to protect that right. But I find that hard to believe. The right of self-defense -- against homegrown tyrants as well as common criminals -- was much on the minds of Americans in the late 18th century. Thomas Jefferson said, "[W]hat country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

But there is something else that many analysts of the decision have missed.

The Bill of Rights did not create rights. It acknowledged them. Right before the July 4 holiday, it shouldn't have been necessary to remind the four Supreme Court dissenters of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ... "

The Framers of the Second Amendment did not say, "The people shall have the right to keep and bear arms." They wrote, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

This isn't just theory. The Cato's Institute's [www.cato.org] Tom Palmer, an early plaintiff in the D.C. gun case, told "20/20" he is alive today because he was carrying a handgun when he was approached on the street by some toughs. "They told us, 'We're going to kill you.' I showed them the business end of a pistol. They turned around, went away."

The four dissenting justices fear the Supreme Court's decision will unleash a flood of gun violence. Unlikely. "Criminals do not have a problem getting guns," Palmer reminded me. It's law-abiding people who suffer when guns are banned.

The victims of gun crimes are easy to count. What cannot be counted are the lives saved because would-be victims were armed. Palmer's confrontation is one of many that didn't make the news.

He asks, "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there and they'll make a crime report and take a picture of your dead body.

"They can't get there in time to save your life."

Maybe I was just watching at the wrong times and just catching some outliers? No. A study by the Business and Media Institute (BMI) found that ABC, CBS and NBC regularly "hyped similarities to the Great Depression."

BMI took a novel approach. It compared the economic-news coverage by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 1929, around the time of the stock market crash, with the coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC from March 13 to 19 of this year.

"The difference between how the 1929 and 2008 media handled a crisis was profound -- with modern journalists hyping every event." Today's coverage is much more alarmist. In 2008, few reporters pointed out "the differences between today's economy and the nation's darkest economic years, or bothered to note that America is not in a depression."

So let me stop here to repeat that. We are not in a depression. We are not even in recession. Get a grip, guys. We ought to point out that whatever today's problems bring, we are far away from reliving the Depression.

As Amity Shlaes points out in her book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" -- which has just been released in paperback -- by November 1933, unemployment had skyrocketed to over 23 percent. Think about that: 5 percent unemployment today vs. 23 percent during the Depression. Amidst today's talk of stock market "collapse," remember that during the Depression, the Dow plummeted to 90, a loss of nearly 75 percent of its previous value. "This downturn is to the Depression as a drizzle is to Katrina," says Shlaes, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "In the Depression, America confronted deflation. There literally wasn't enough money. People made their own scrip, Monopoly money, to pay their bills. In Utah, they made a currency called the Vallar. Today, we are in an inflation. If this period is like anything, it is like the 1970s."

Positive news doesn't fit the narrative. On a day the Dow rose, writes BMI's Dan Gainor, ABC "Reporter Dan Harris seemed puzzled during the ... broadcast of 'World News with Charles Gibson' when he asked: "The sky is not falling. Why not?"

All three major broadcast networks are culpable. But BMI says CBS was the worst. That's typical when it comes to economic coverage, BMI added. "Business reporter Anthony Mason was even called 'the grim reaper' by his own anchor Katie Couric." "Early Show" co-host Julie Chen talked about "a world financial crisis" as if a "crisis" was just a given.

The state of economic reporting in this country is abysmal. We might laugh at it if it didn't have bad consequences. But the more people hear such inappropriate comparisons, the more apt they are to believe them and change their behavior accordingly -- investing less and taking fewer economic risks -- thereby aggravating bad economic conditions.

No wonder, as the Associated Press reported, "U.S. consumers are the gloomiest they've been since the tail end of the last prolonged recession".

I am not saying the 1929 coverage was great; looking back, much of it was naive. I'm also not saying there are no economic problems today. But today's problems are no excuse for reporters to make glib comparisons to the Great Depression.

Let me get this straight. A potential president of a putatively free country scolds companies for "obscene profits," failure to invest in competing products, and therefore irresponsible citizenship. Why? Is McCain running for national economic commissar?

This is not the first time McCain has displayed what I would call an anti-capitalist mentality. In an early presidential debate he countered former businessman Mitt Romney's claim to superior executive experience by saying, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism".

Why the put down of profit?

It's clear McCain does not understand how markets work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success.

McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on." He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle. Sen. McCain must have meant it when he said, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues".

I doubt that speculators are responsible for much of the run-up of oil prices. Why didn't they run them up sooner? Besides, there are too many other explanations: increased demand from China and India, the declining dollar and Middle East tensions.

Even if speculators did play a role, what McCain apparently doesn't understand is that speculators perform a valuable service. Most people don't realize this because on the surface speculators don't seem productive. They buy what already exists and resell it. How does that help society?

In fact, the hated speculator is a good guy because his buying and selling reduce volatility and uncertainty in an unpredictable world. He may only be out for his own profit, but that doesn't matter. As Adam Smith wrote, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".

The prices of commodities often change unexpectedly, making business risky. The speculator brings a degree of certainty to otherwise risky ventures. When supplies of a commodity are plentiful and prices low -- but speculators expect the price to rise later -- they buy -- cushioning the collapse of prices. When supplies become scarcer and prices rise, they sell -- easing the shortage and lowering the price. Also, speculators may agree to buy a commodity in the future for a price locked in today. This reduces the risk for an oil producer or farmer who fears investing because he doesn't know what price his product will sell for next year.

As a result of these activities, volatile supplies and prices are evened out over time. Occasionally, speculators increase volatility. Markets are never perfect. (Although they are better than government regulation.) But in general, speculators increase liquidity and keep the market on a more even keel. This makes long-term planning easier for everyone.

It would be nice if McCain would finally learn some economics.