The Censorship Doctrine

By Jack Ward

After the Left lost control of congress they acknowledged that they had a communication problem. To fix this problem and control the language, they cleverly resorted to using Orwellian euphemisms to mask their agenda. To accomplish this task the Left sought out linguists to give them words that would easily deceive the masses.

For example, when the Left says 'economic justice' it means redistribution of wealth, 'restoring fairness to the economy' is code for taxing the rich, 'social justice' is an expansion of the welfare state, and 'investments' are wealth transfers that fund the socialist agenda. The latest euphemism is the 'fairness doctrine' which is to censor free speech.

Now that the Left has total control of the congress and the presidency, they want to keep all that power. The easiest way to maintain the political power is to control dissenting speech. The Left has very little opposition from media sources like PBS, NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC or major newspapers. It is the same blah, blah, blah. The only difference is the hairdo. Talk radio provides alterative opinions. Therefore, for the Left to maintain their control, it is imperative that they silence talk radio.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and her minions have already signaled that they plan to reinstate the so called 'Fairness Doctrine'. The doctrine was an arcane rule that required a radio station to 'balance' discussion on controversial issues. Of course 'balance' was an arbitrary ruling based on the political affiliations of the Federal Communication Commission.

The record keeping burden on radio stations was so oppressive that it was not profitable to air talk radio shows on controversial political issues. The policy was established when there were limited media outlets. Today there are hundreds of media outlets and thousands of talk shows. Pelosi and her minions are not concerned about fairness or balance. They want to stifle any and all opposition speech.

Pelosi will find sympathy for censoring speech in the Obama administration. After all during the campaign the Obama campaign did try to silence organizations by threatening the TV and radio stations that ran ads opposing him and removed reporters from newspapers that supported McCain from the campaign plane. Censorship has become the modus operandi of the Left. By controlling information they can control what the public thinks. The Left extols the freedom of speech - as long as it speech that they want to hear.

Stifling speech is not new. Leading up to the Revolutionary War, the ruling British government was plagued by Thomas Paine. Paine published a pamphlet entitled, Common Sense.

Common Sense resonated with the common people and has been described as, "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era." Paine used the information technology of the day (the printing press) to reach the people.

Our Founders were well aware of King George's attempt to stifle political speech and protected free speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Today's equivelant to Common Sense is talk radio. King George wanted to silence Thomas Paine as much as Nancy Pelosi wants to silence talk radio. Both King George and Queen Nancy recognized that an informed population is an asset in a free society but it is dangerous in a totalitarian society.

Talk radio is a commercial enterprise that depends on advertisers to stay in business. Many Left leaning hosts attempted to be successful in talk radio and most have failed. When Air America announced that it was going to create a leftwing radio network to compete against conservative talk show hosts, the Left was giddy that it would now have a radio network. But few listened to the leftwing rants and without listeners, Air America could not attract advertisers and soon failed. The Left wouldn't support leftwing radio so for 'balance' and 'fairness' the Pelosi solution is to shut down talk radio under the guise of 'fairness'.

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