Lawmakers Seek to Revive So Called Fairness Doctrine

Washington these days is full of the most bizarre double speak. Democrats seek to censor and destroy viewpoints they don’t agree with through laws that they say require fairness and balance. Since when is censorship and destruction fairness and balance?

The radical left is deeply unhappy because the old media—newspapers and television networks—are still dominated by the classically liberal center left. While they are happy to constantly savage the president and grind away at the war in Iraq, they still do not tell the lies and tall tales that originate from the international socialist movement and the lunatic fringe of left-wing American politics. From the point of view of the radical left, it is not nearly enough that the major news networks never tell the stories of heroes in Iraq or explain that Iraq is a kill zone designed to draw Al Qaeda terrorists from around the world, fix their position, and kill them in a place far away from the United States, the media can only please the radical left by also claiming that Iraq is a war for corporate profit and that the United States is more brutal than Sadam Hussein (both extreme lies). The left is also upset because conservative talk radio shows like Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingram, Michael Medved, and Rush Limbaugh eloquently express morally conservative and libertarian Burkian and right-wing populist thought so effectively and in such an entertaining way that they succeed in persuading millions of Americans. But talk radio merely counter balances the classic center-left media whose voice is far more pervasive and loud. This is to say nothing of Hollywood and the left-wing movies, television programs and rock albums that propagandize unwitting Americans as they think they are merely being entertained. The left also fails to take into account the way in which they consistently brainwash youth through the public education system. Public education encourages students to believe in scientifically weak ideas such as the notion that human beings are causing global warming, to believe in politically ridiculous ideas like the claim that the C.I.A. and the Defense Department run the American government, and to believe in personally ridiculous ideas like the notion that President Bush, a Harvard Business School graduate who flew the difficult and somewhat dangerous F106 Delta Dagger for the international Guard, is both stupid and cowardly. The left is never happy with merely having everyone moderately on their side. They want everyone to be spouting the tall tales invented by radical spokesmen who seek to further the agendas of every left-wing totalitarian regime in history through whatever means they believe will work to bring about class warfare, social revolution, and the elimination of orthodox Christian faith and western civilization as we know it. These radicals do not believe in objective moral truth or even objective reality and have no problem merely making things up because they believe that is what everyone does.

The Fairness Doctrine is not an attempt at fairness. It is an attempt at destroying conservative talk radio and any real fairness or balance now in existence. Requiring conservative talk shows or conservative news shows to respond to complaints by left-wing activists and to give the activists equal time will make the shows boring and difficult to listen to. Once the shows are less entertaining and less economically viable, they will disappear. Left-wing shows are already not entertaining and not economically viable or there would be many of them competing with the current conservative talk shows. There really is a marketplace in ideas and people aren’t buying left-wing ideas because they aren’t rational, don’t make sense, and exhibit neither conformity to reality nor a healthy sense of humor. I only hope that the proposal for the renewal of the old Fairness Doctrine is laughed out of town.