Gunpowder Chronicle posted on July 8, 2007 5:19 PM | Rating:
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Why does the Left love the Fairness Doctrine -- an illiberal policy if there ever was one?
Because the Left fears competition in a way that is self-defeating, self-emasculating, and self-serving. And the Fairness Doctrine -- among other invidious regulations-- is anti-competitive. The Fairness Doctrine acts much like Marxism does. By making the market flatter for all, it diminishes the opportunity for the uniquely talented among us to succeed without succor from the state. It constrains creativity, argument, debate, reason, and investigation, substituting these high qualities of The Enlightenment for cold elitism of the Guilded Age.
Around the world, the Left cannot compete effectively in the marketplace of ideas. There are no new ideas that drive the intellectual underpinnings of the left. The Left constantly harkens back to ideas that long ago were placed on the ash heap of history-- collectivization, nationalization of industry, price controls, Keynesian economics, protectionism -- the list goes on and on. Class struggle is not new; Marx and Engels wrote of it in the 1850s. A more nefarious version justified the "Southern Way of Life" until Appomatox-- and doomed the southern Aristocracy to a has been.
The Fairness Doctrine is nothing more than one of this long list. It is not about providing fairness. If fairness were really the issue, than the United States government would give everyone a blog and a radio station. Every citizen would be able to have their own TV show.
Ahh... but wait. We have that. The market, throught the innovative, entrepreneurial pioneerism that is the internet, is already supplying that. YouTube, MySpace, blogs, message boards-- these are all the core of the "New Media" that empowers the average citizen like nothing since the dawn of the Gutenberg Bible.
And that is the rub of the argument. The Left in America is losing control of the debate. Their sycophants in the printed press are struggling mightily to even survive. Their sycophants on TV can't even compare. Fox has twice the audience at 8:00pm of MSNBC. And liberal radio? That giant sucking sound you hear is liberal radio.
The Left can't compete... so they must control. They must dominate. Bereft of ideas, of vision, of vigor, they seek a legal solution to their economic incompetence. It is no different than with the law. Unable to convince a majority of Americans that murdering unborn children is a good thing, the resort to the courts to convince a minority of Americans to provide a legal solution to their political incompetence.
Or with campaign finance. Unable to compete in a completely open system -- where the names and amounts of donors would be posted openly and immediately, they seek a legal solution to their ethical insufficiency, depriving individuals of the right to gather for the collective redress of their grievances.
They cannot compete, so they must control. They must flatten the market, and compress the oxygen of freedom within it. Limit the ability of all free citizens to independently and collectively engage their government and their government officials. The greatness threat to liberal hegemony and position -- to liberal elitism and their rule -- is freedom.
The Fairness Doctrine is about restricting freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression. All because liberals cannot compete in a market where citizens are free.