Silencing political speech

One of the things you get when you vote Democrats into the majority is Leftists in power. First, I'm not saying that all Democrats are Leftists, but some are. And some of those who are get positions of power. And when you get Leftists in positions of power, you the Left wing version repression. Take Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders for instance who want to legislate the Fairness Doctrine which in NewSpeak means suppressing political speech.

Essentially, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcast licensees to devote a reasonable amount of airtime to the discussion of important public issues and to have both sides represented in that discussion.

As spelled out by the FCC in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine also incorporated the Personal Attack Rule, requiring broadcasters to provide rebuttal time to anyone who had been attacked on the air.

Now Leftists of all flavors have noticed that their ideas don't sell. Compare Rush Limbaugh to Air America for instance. Leftists hate that that fact. So they want to make sure that you have to listen to their point of view. The Fairness Doctrine, then, uses the power of the government to assure that if you freely tune into a talk show that is "conservative", you must also listen to the "liberal" rebuttal.

Now the rules for the actual implementation of this are complicated, and the bottom line is that if (like Air America) you have people expounding ideas that don't have an audience and doesn't make the broadcaster money, the broadcaster must present these shows anyway.

So what do you think broadcasters are going to do? Rather than lose money, political speech will disappear from the airwaves. More precisely, "conservative" political speech will disappear from the airwaves and since there weren't any significant "liberal" shows. That's called "fairness."

Referring to our experience the last time the "Fairness" doctrine was law,

Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine, calls the doctrine "dangerous and unproductive" and bad for talk radio.

"It did nothing except chill free speech," Harrison says. "It made it very difficult for stations to engage in free and open discussion of ideas. Talk radio owes its explosive growth over the last 20 years to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine."

The Left doesn't agree, mostly because without the "Fairness Doctrine", they lose. If people wanted Leftist talk radio as much as, or more then they want "conservative" talk radio, there wouldn't be a need for a "Fairness Doctrine" would there.

Leftists are happiest when the prevailing doctrine is indoctrination.

And that's the bottom line.