There's My Two Cents: Censorship Is On The Way

I wouldn't be surprised to see some major new efforts to censor free speech after January 20th rolls around. Allow me to introduce the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which would be more appropriately named the Censorship Doctrine. This is basically a policy that would require all talk radio stations to provide equal air time to opposite viewpoints of anything controversial spoken or reported. There are any number of problems with this, but I'll just highlight a few of the obvious ones.

First off, we have this little thing called the First Amendment in our Constitution, and it says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It is illegal -- according to the Constitution, for whatever that's worth to liberal Dems -- to prohibit or abridge free speech. Now, without getting into all of those exceptions like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, this is a pretty basic right that pretty much everyone understands. It means that the discussion and debate of ideas shall not be silenced. This country was founded on the principles of freedom and choice, and the Founders were trying to enshrine those principles into our nation permanently with this amendment. And yet, the Fairness/Censorship Doctrine will take square aim against those principles. Here's how, in a nutshell.

Anytime someone on the radio says something controversial, someone who happens to believe differently can call the radio station and demand equal time to express the opposite viewpoint, and the station cannot refuse. So, you'd end up with idiots walking in off the street -- potentially with absolutely no experience or ability to hold a coherent thought, much less an audience -- to fill the airwaves with verbal garbage. What will happen in that case? The audience goes away because no one wants to listen to garbage. When the audience goes away, the advertisers go away, and when the advertisers go away, the station goes away. If this policy gets re-enacted, we'll see a tidal wave of complaints on small radio stations, forcing them to close down. On top of that, this will also hurt every company with a financial interest in the advertisements and supporting industries around those stations and the products advertised there. This phenomenon will similarly play out with the larger radio stations, and though they may not necessarily go out of business, they will most certainly ditch all controversial programming. This is how things worked before Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and no one aired anything that could possibly be considered controversial. Speech, discussion, and debate were effectively silenced. Incidentally, once the free market started taking hold in AM radio, the band came alive, and has expanded from a couple hundred stations to a couple thousand stations. That's what the free market will do when the product is worth buying.

That's another point worth making - the Fairness/Censorship Doctrine is actually an attack on both free speech and capitalism by forcing certain viewpoints into a conversation when the people buying the product don't want it. If there was a market for liberal talk radio, it would be succeeding - it's been tried. Remember Air America? Not many people actually listened to it, so it went out about as fast as it came in, but that's because no one wanted to listen to it, so no one advertised on it, and the stations went under. Voila - free speech and capitalism at its finest!

Anyway, the next point is that, aside from the truly amazing hypocrisy of the Left caring only about certain jobs -- which obviously do not include talk radio jobs -- being lost, a giant loophole exists in the definition of 'controversial': it's almost totally open-ended, which means that any lawyer or Senator with a microphone can make an argument that a program should be censored on behalf of someone lodging a complaint.

Most of the leading Democrats -- including President-Elect Obama, House Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Reid -- have already announced their intentions to reinstate this clear violation of the 1st Amendment, so this will be a battle we'll have to fight. Mike Pence is the leading conservative voice on our side. Check out his website below for a ton of good information about it (including a great Myth vs. Fact comparison here).

So, why are the Dems looking at this? Because talk radio is the one area of media that is dominated by conservatives and conservative ideas. By silencing this key industry, the Democrats will strike a potentially fatal blow to the opposing viewpoint. If it were really about 'fairness', why would they target the one industry which they don't control? If it were really about 'fairness', it should be applied across the board to TV, FM radio, newspapers, magazines, and all other forms of media, right? Not so, according to the Dems.

They're now offering up all kinds of justifications to try to confuse people, so you need to be aware of what this really is, and how to see through the deception. They consider conservative talk radio to be the equivalent of pornography, and should be censored. They say it's about 'localism', which means that only local interests should be served by talk radio stations, but a single complaint (presumably from a local) can almost single-handedly derail a station's ability to retain a broadcasting license. This is not speculation - these are things that have already been proposed or tried in certain cases. If these policies become institutionalized at a national level, the only major conservative voice in the public media will die.

Ah, but what about the Internet, you say? Well, that was my first thought, too. A whole lot of people have broadband Internet access nowadays, so maybe talk radio shows could just go online, right? Not exactly. There is also an effort underway to censor the Internet. Obama's selection for the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, is a dangerous choice for many reasons, his history on censorship certainly being one of them - he's on record as being in favor of implementing 'reasonable' restrictions on the Internet. I'm guessing that they would not only target talk radio 'shows', but also conservative blogs, conservative e-zines, and anything else they deem 'pornographic' (except for actual pornogaphy, of course - that's free speech). Now, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to predict that this will turn into a boiling frog scenario, do you? If we allow a little bit of heat, we'll end up getting boiled before we realize what's happened. It's liberalism creep - one little, irreversible step at a time, until we've fallen off the cliff.

Both the administration and Congress are about to be led by people who freely propose to violate the very same Constitution they're supposed to defend and uphold.

So, what do we do?

We start working now. We need to spread the word on what this so-called Fairness Doctrine (i.e. Censorship Doctrine) is, what it did in the past, and how it is a violation of the Constitution. It's all about eliminating ignorance to such an extent that the deceits of the Left will find no traction. We've got to get out in front of the actual push to reinstate the policy so that people will be ready for it. For example, if people hear the phrase 'Fairness Doctrine' but don't know what it's really all about, they will think that sound perfectly reasonable, right? That's the danger in the name of this policy, and that's why we've got to spread the TRUTH far and wide first.

Then, we need to push our elected reps -- I know, you may not get very far, but trust me, they pay attention to a flood of calls and e-mails, so keep it up -- to fight against this policy. We need to communicate to them that we understand what it really is, that it is unconstitutional, and that we will not tolerate it.

Then, when the big moment comes and it's time for them to cast a vote, we hammer them with calls and e-mails demanding they oppose it.

I'll keep you up to date as I read about this abomination moving forward. Let's make this one go down like shamnesty - death by millions of paper cuts.

There's my two cents.