"Fairness Doctrine" Update. 

Since last we posted, the Chairman of the FCC has announced that he believes the "Fairness
Doctrine" (otherwise known as the Democrats' bid for exclusivity on the airwaves) is unnecessary.

We couldn't agree with him more, and having taken him to task for his initial suggestion of support
we would now like to congratulate him for having had the integrity to explore the decision further and the courage to change it.

 

The Democrats haven’t even been in power a year, yet, and already they have laid siege to all of our American institutions, with the apparent objective of destroying them.

 

Freedom of Religion came first. Preachers who made moral pronouncements from the pulpit (which is, after all, their job) were accused of “hate speech,” and laws were proposed to silence them. Under this legislation, which was actually introduced, anyone who claimed to be offended by anything someone said would immediately expose that person to criminal prosecution.

 

That didn’t work.

 

 So, the next salvo was fired at Freedom of Speech and Assembly. The Democrats actually introduced legislation creating the status of  “grass-roots lobbyist.” The legislation was aimed at the talk shows, but the status would apply to anyone who expressed a political opinion in front of a group, right down to verbose types who were given to express their views over a few at the local pub. These people, in order to maintain the privilege of expressing themselves, would have had to register with the government as lobbyists. If they didn’t, they would be liable to fines and/or imprisonment.

 

That didn’t work, either.

 

So, now they’re after Freedom of the Press. Harry Reid has said he is going to “do something about” talk radio, the only news media (besides the Net) that the Democrats don’t control.

 

The Talk Shows are about the free exchange of information and ideas between free citizens of a free country. The Democrats perceive this to be dangerous, and are determined to curtail it. The instrument is the removal of broadcast licensing from the public marketplace and the assignment
of broadcast rights by the FCC bureaucracy. The reason: "Fair representation."

 

The Chairman of the FCC, a putative Republican, champions this. And why not? Guess who gets to decide what’s "fair," and what’s not. That’s right: he does. Imagine the temptation of having absolute control over what people are and are not permitted to hear over the public airwaves. It’s a bureaucrat’s dream of heaven!

 

Will President Bush take action? No one else can. The FCC is an Executive Branch agency, unbeholden to the House or Senate. The only power the peoples’ representatives

have over the FCC is for the House to threaten to with-hold funding. Can you imagine a

Democrat-controlled House issuing such a warning, when if they win the Presidency

next year (and they fully expect to), they will own the FCC?

 

Since their first day in office, the Democrats have fought for the means to censor any idea they don’t happen to like. The effects on formerly-free Americans will be catastrophic, if

they succeed, for our new masters will have the power to starve families into submission through legal action and fines, and to imprison people, for the crime of disagreeing with them.

 

If you don’t believe it, read the legislation they have already proposed, so far this year. See what sort of power over your speech, even over your thoughts, they have already tried to gain.

 

The New Free Press

 

Talk radio is nothing more or less than editorial journalism. The host, an editorialist, reports and comments upon the news of the day. A “call screener,” who is the equivalent of an Editorial Section Editor, evaluates and places what amount to Op-Ed pieces and Letters to the Editor. The format

is more exciting than a newspaper's editorial page, because it is more immediately interactive. Still,
the talk shows are part of our free press--a part the Democrats seek to stifle.
  

You can be sure that if the oligarchists succeed in this effort, their next targets will be the tiny number of newspapers and magazines that can’t be relied on to parrot what they’re sent.

 

In 1776, we fought a war against a franchised nobility that had virtually unlimited power over “commoners.” People who spoke against things their “betters” wanted exposed themselves to the full force of government retaliation. We decided to start a country where things like that didn’t happen, and it grew to be the most successful thing that had ever happened to Planet Earth.

 

We need to keep it, and the obvious fact is that the Democrats don’t want us to. They consider
themselves today’s rightful “nobility,” and view the freedoms of a free people as an inconvenience.

 

We voted these people in as an expression of our distaste for the Republicans’ giddy abandonment of the principles of limited government and national integrity. In the process, we seem to have voted in a monster that has already tried to destroy and devour the institutions of our nation and everything we have stood for since our founding.

 

There is another election coming up in 2008, and it’s our opportunity to preserve the

nation as we know it. The Republicans have gotten our message, and I doubt they'll make

the same mistakes, again.. If they do, we can always throw them out, again. In the meantime,

those who replaced them have fought hard to gain the power to tell us what we are and

are not allowed to read, hear and say. Before they succeed, it’s time for another house-cleaning.