Senator James DeMint (R-SC) will test both President Barack Obama’s words and his fellow Senators’ votes by bringing an amendment that would prohibit the FCC from reinstituting the ‘Fairness Doctrine’. Mark Levin talked about this last night, as well as of the legislation the amendment would be attached to:
Rush Limbaugh has a letter addressed to President Obama in the Wall Street Journal this morning on this as well:
Mr. President, we both know that this new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity. It should be rejected. You’ve said you’re against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but you’ve not made it clear where you stand on possible regulatory efforts to impose so-called local content, diversity-of-ownership, and public-interest rules that your FCC could issue.
I do not favor content-based regulation of National Public Radio, newspapers, or broadcast or cable TV networks. I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org. There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.
Hannity looks nicer in person
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Obama seems to have a vendetta against everyone who did not vote for him. I still do not believe 52% of Americans voted for him! I would like to know that America is much smarter than this. The Fairness Doctrine is his next step to degrade this country.
The first thing the Bolsheviks did in 1917 was to seize the media (newspapers). The modern day Bolsheviks changing the United States from “the way it is to the way it should be” (Saul Alinsky/Barack Obama as re-counted by Michelle Obama) are seizing the only remaining media where truth is being told, Conservative Talk Radio. They won’t storm the studios and arrest the hosts behind their microphones. They instead, will assign a staff of 1,000 lawyers and the full power of the House, Senate, and the Executive Branch to find an indirect path to accomplish the same thing. (Given enough money and enough lawyers you can do anything).
But a simple little annoying right gets in their way. It is more powerful than 1,000,000 lawyers. It is the 1st Amendment. “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”
No matter how complex or convoluted the crafted legislation is, the following test must be applied:
Does the new law abridge or reduce in scope or diminish: freedom of speech of citizens in general, or freedom of speech of the Press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble?
Shows like Mark Levin’s are more than just entertainment with an inherent freedom of speech. The Mark Levin Show is a form of the Press, announcing current government and political events and explaining how these events or legislation will affect us. In addition, Mark’s show is a modern form of the people peaceably assembling through phone-in comments/questions.
The new law that the Libs write may assess fines against those AM radio stations that don’t provide equal time for liberal points of view but there will be no fines for those television stations that don’t provide equal time to Conservative points of view. (Also, don’t be surprised if a few Repubs vote for the bill)
The founding fathers made this the 1st Amendment for a reason. They felt that nothing was more important than the right of a citizen to articulate political viewpoints in the town square, the town hall, or through the printed media without being harassed or limited by the government.
Most of the uninformed, uneducated idiots in the United States (Obama voters) think that Freedom of Speech is a right bestowed onto Howard Stern to say what ever kind of crude, vulgar remark he desires. The same people conversely think that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin shouldn’t have the right to disagree with the President.
With a razor-thin conservative majority in the Supreme Court, there can be no getting around the 1st Amendment by the Libs. However, Executive Orders can be issued by the President to shut down Conservative free speech since the FCC reports to him. It then may take years to reach the Supreme Court.
If Obama and the Liberal Democrats succeed in shutting down Conservative Free Speech, they have CROSSED THE LINE toward a “hard” tyranny. There is no reason to silence your critics when you already have a majority of voters on your side and the majority in both the House and Senate unless you are orchestrating a final and complete power grab and change to dictatorship!
It’s truly alarming the speed with which this administration is racing to curb our freedoms and forever alter our American way of life. These leftists have been waiting for this moment for a very long time, and you can almost sense their salivating at the opportunity to finally get this close to their socialistic goals.
I know I am not alone when I pledge that I will become a conservative activist on steroids if these Stalinist creeps try to interfere in any substantive way with our conservative talk show heros’ ability to broadcast their programs. I will make phone calls every day. I will write letters to the editor until they are sick of reading them. I will email Congress constantly. I will march on Washington as often as it takes.
I very much doubt that these people have any understanding whatsoever of the incredible level of rage that will result from any effort they might make to censure our right of free political speech in this manner. I am seething right now, just thinking about it! They are definitely overreaching when they consider such Draconian measures, and if they actually take action to implement them, they will unleash a fury that they will regret!
While reading about President George Washington today I came across a quote of his “The freedom of speech may be taken awayand, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter”. American must not stand idly by while the Government interprets our freedom. Fairness or otherwise
I am not for silence of any kind. Opposing viewpoints are
the right of all Americans. The fairness doctrine or
whatever they are calling it is for disposing opposition.
A country without opposing thought, criticism, or public
discussion is a dictatorship. Now we are a government of one party and all Americans should be deeply concerned.
As significant as the First Amendment is this is ultimately about so much more.
Sometimes the rather mundane and ordinary everyday experiences of life can subtlety impart some rather striking lessons. And so it occurred to me many years ago that under certain circumstances the more you know and understand the more burdensome some experiences can become. When I first met the woman who was to eventually become my mother-in-law she casually asked me if I could read a blueprint related to a new house she was constructing in Florida. Without hesitating I picked up the design and proceeded to explain what she needed to know. That innocent episode subsequently led to countless hours of redesigning almost every possible floor plan arrangement and window and roof alternative that was architecturally possible. And so it continues, on to this day, with her daughter, who has learned to use many exploitative interrogation techniques designed to extract every drop of knowledge she wishes to understand on matters and subjects that I unsuccessfully attempt to feign ignorance about. In essence, the more it is assessed that I comprehend, the more my time and effort are conscripted into projects and jobs that I often have no desire to perform. And the taskmaster is relentless.
In an odd way the above experiences, taken to another level, where volition is absent, is what underpins the collectivist mindset that believes in the Marxist axiom “from each according to his ability to each according to his needsâ€Â. The idea that we will all get the same rewards for unequal performance is somehow supposed to generate a maximum societal effort and has become the basis for economic systems that has seen nations, for generations, robbed of the most basic of achievements because their peoples have been denied freedom and liberty required to take control of their own lives and, by so doing, improve themselves. Incentive has no home. That is unless you call guilt incentive. We may live and work together in a society but, unlike colonies of ants and bees, we do not all perform equally. To the extent that we are motivated individual risk takers we ultimately achieve success because we hope to be rewarded for our effort. That concept creates property and prosperity that enriches our lives in innumerable and almost incalculable ways.
We do not all toil and perspire for the same number of hours each day; we do not all study hard; we do not all equally risk as much time, effort and property. Our fellow countrymen, our family and our friends may do less and yet demand more. Are we supposed to respond by working harder and longer and risking more for their benefit without any additional personal rewards? Should we aspire to develop even more sophisticated talents and offer more of our labor, time and property for those who refuse to do likewise? And, if we don’t, should we feel guilty? Should we not desire a little more, maybe a lot more and a better life if we expend and risk more, or should we extinguish such thoughts because we know there are others who have less? Is it more patriotic not to complain? Should our needs, or the needs of a stranger, come first? Should everyone’s ability, effort and time be thrown into the same grab bag where we all draw out and whereby the one, who often did the least, receive the most based upon a perceived need, greed or demand? Does someone have the right to demand that we provide them with what he or she desires and lacks because their labor and/or talent failed to provide them with the same or as much as we have?
Can someone intelligently explain why a Great Society should ever be constructed so that all our efforts and produce are confiscated and redistributed to achieve a different result than we currently enjoy? In fact who has the authority to grant dominion over our lives to such a society? If capitalism is supposed to produce unequal wealth, which it does, I ask those who wish to exploit such differences, by instigating envy and jealousy, “to what extent will their alternative collectivist society create greater harmony?†I suspect that although such a society will be defined as classless, we will discover that those who minimally contribute will be resented and eventually despised for such behavior. Those, who today hate the ambitious, will tomorrow find themselves hated by the productive. Ultimately such a system will foster an environment where the only way that someone can get ahead is by complaining more than another, feigning disability, sickness and incapacitation and/or by outright pleading with the central planers. In other words they must cheat and beg because citizens of such a classless society will be unable to fend for themselves. Moreover such a society will diminish the desire for self-improvement, for what will be the point of such effort if the economic result will always be the same? In fact it would become advantageous to know less than your fellow countryman lest you be required to work longer and harder. And to what extent can we respect each other? In short it will bring out the worst of human nature. Is capitalism so awful because of greed? Tell me what the difference is between greed, self-interest and motivation?
Now we all know that some in life have accidents and experience events beyond their control that may render them incapable to easily succeed. Even though it is not our fault, or our responsibility, most of us, in a society where capitalism and free markets (absent criminals) operate will tear down walls to be generous and helpful to those less fortunate than ourselves. I strongly believe in compassion and charity. I do not believe it should ever be mandated at the expense of liberty, freedom and choice. If capitalism is to be faulted it can, ironically, fool us into thinking that the excesses and variety of abundances it creates, and that we all enjoy and take for granted, can be better achieved by other alternative economic approaches. Such a misconception may make us forgetful of just how lucky we really are; to the extent that we succumb to such thoughts and feel that we may be catapulted into an improved economic strata by the subsidy of those who are better off than ourselves we should also consider that there will be hordes behind us that feel the same about us subsidizing them. Unfortunately, should such a substitute economy become a reality, the original system that has protected our liberty and freedom, created summers of abundance and autumns of great harvests, will be replaced by one which provides us with none of the aforementioned but, instead, only with long winters of discontent.
You’ve said a mouthful, task.
And everything you said is true. Unfortunately, a great number of Americans have bought the socialist bill of goods that they’ve been brainwashed with all their lives. This tide has to be turned.