Nonsense from the Angry Left, Part I

House Democrats proposed two bills in 2005 to bring the Fairness Doctrine back, -- and as a law, rather than a mere regulation.

(The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation that required radio and later television stations to cover "vitally important controversial issues of interest in the community served by the broadcaster" and to provide "opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on such issues." It essentially served to suppress any non-liberal media).

The not-so-subtle target of these bills? Talk radio, like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and FoxNews.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, who introduced the first of the two bills, says that right-ruled radio is a grave threat to American freedoms, "a waste of good broadcast time, and a waste of our airwaves." People "may hear whatever they please and whatever they choose," she tells PBS's Bill Moyers, in a statement as incoherent as it is illiberal. "And of course they have the right to turn it off. But that's not good enough either. The fact is that they need the responsibility of the people who are licensed to use our airwaves judiciously and responsibly to call them to account if they don't."


In other words, people can't be trusted with freedom but need the supervision of a paternalist government.


(summary from today's Wall Stree Journal Opinion Journal article entitled "Shut Up, They Explained," by Brian Anderson.)