Free Speech

What did the founding fathers have in mind when they wrote the first amendment to the Constitution? Maybe a better question is who were they trying to protect this right from? The right to free speech, like every other right in the Constitution, is to be protected from the government. No corporation, company, or individual has the authority or ability to remove this first and most basic right like the government, especially the federal government. Unfortunately the nitwits in office have warped this meaning. They feel it necessary to "protect" free speech. How do the do this you ask? By force, like they do everything. Only a warped government bureaucrat can take the first amendment and use it to suppress free speech. Lets look how this is done.

The first and most obvious way is through by making the airways "public".
By doing this they put them under government control. I can not think of a more dangerous threat to free speech then the government deciding what kind of speech can or cannot be heard under the cloak of "public good". Is giving the government control of the airways honoring the intention of the first amendment? Of course not, considering as I mentioned earlier that it was protection of speech from the government that the founders were worried about.

An offshoot of this is the "fairness doctrine", which is currently being reintroduced in congress. For those of you who don't know the fairness doctrine is legislation that "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance." In a nutshell this doctrine states that various stations (aimed at talk radio) must present a balanced view of the issues. There is so much wrong with this line of thinking I don't know where to start. First, who the hell is the government to tell anyone what they can or cannot say on a private station? Is it really protecting free speech when you force a private company to air something it does not agree with? The right to not say something is just as important as the right to say something. If I am being forced to say something I don't agree with then that is not free speech. Maybe a station will be forced to air something it finds morally offensive. Will Christan stations be forced to air information that contradicts the bible? I guess the decision will be at the whim of a bureaucrat.

Another problem with the fairness doctrine is who decides what is balanced? Something which I considered totally one sided can be described as fair. A story about man made global warming would be considered fair, while a story regarding it as bogus would need to be balanced.
An additional factor to consider is there are more than two sides to most issues. Does the libertarian argument get equal time on these airways? In my opinion it will suppress free speech further, because so much time will be devoted to towing both party lines that the unique perspective, such as the libertarian argument will not be heard. God forbid a radio station does play a libertarian idea, which bad mouths both parties it could lose its license for violating the law, because there will be noone in the government to protect these views.

Do we really want to give more control to power hungry bureaucrats? If this law passes the press will be screened by the government. Anytime something is considered offensive or threatening to the power of various government officials they can state that not enough time is being devoted to the other side (their side) and threaten them with punishment. I just don't remember reading that in the Constitution.

One last thing I would like to mention is government controlled stations and programing. This is were local governments set up TV shows or channels to spit out their crap. Nothing like having my tax dollars stolen and used to support a view which I disapprove of. In these cases it is a double whammy, they violate our property rights and free speech rights. We have a local show called the Mecklenburgers or as I like to call it the "government propaganda show" which does just this. It basically is a show that is set up like a sit-com, but instead of laughs we get to hear how great government programs are.

We have to put a stop to this now. First, we have to demand the fairness doctrine be defeated. Secondly, we must somehow get the airways out of the public domain, because public=government. Lastly, we must demand that the government never uses tax money to support speech and never tells a private person or company what to say or not say. If this continues we will only lose more of our first amendment rights under the disguise of protection of free speech. Pretty soon JCARD will have to talk about how much he loves to hug trees or conserve energy and nobody wants to hear that.