Fairness, Liberal Style

Back to the future

First of all, no one should be so deluded as to imagine that the current left wing obsession with bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” has anything to do with fairness. It is raw, ugly, cynical political plotting. It is a political power play designed to shut down the most successful and popular opposition medium. It is more akin to the tactics of Hugo Chavez than to the traditions of American democracy.

And it has Clinton fingerprints all over it.

The hallmark of Clintonism is front-office “triangulation” designed to create an appearance of moderation, coupled with a back-office bare-knuckled forcing of socialist (aka “Progressive”) agenda items. Giving credit where it is due, the whole Clinton crowd is very good at this. Aggressive competence is not a trait we have come to expect from the post-modern left. But they have it in spades.

The most cynical view of this whole affair is that the Clintons gave former Chief of Staff John Podesta marching orders to distract and/or disable the most vociferous source of conservative opposition before the 2008 election cycle got into full swing. Podesta, though the Center for American Progress, dutifully produced the white paper that got the ball rolling.

It is all rather reminiscent of the efforts of the Clinton Administration in the late 1990s to harass and attempt to silence key critical conservative organizations by misusing the IRS to launch phony audits. They came close to putting The American Spectator out of business.

And it is all rather scary, because it highlights the fact that what we are dealing with are closet totalitarians. They are not fond of criticism, but what really drives them up the wall is the continuing domination of conservative ideas and the demonstrated ability of right-wing media to frustrate the leftist agenda.

There is a certain strain of liberals who display an endearing naiveté. They really do want things to be “fair,” and with such people one can only patiently explain the absurdity of attempting to enforce “fairness” through government coercion. But those aren’t the people running this effort. These people, quite frankly, are no friends of democracy. I deeply believe that for them the First Amendment is of value only insofar as it facilitates their agenda. In the case at hand they have no problem attempting to blatantly violate the spirit, and very likely the letter, of the Constitution in order to achieve their political goals. To do so behind a mask of “fairness” is classic Clinton smokescreen.

Oddly enough, it reminds me of Title IX. You know Title IX, it was the section of the Education Amendment passed in 1972 that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in higher education. As interpreted by the federal bureaucracies, and particularly the Clinton Administration, this came to include the provision that “fairness” meant that exactly the same number of athletic opportunities had to be available to women as to men. It didn’t matter that this was a ridiculous notion on its face. No, the feminist worldview “fairness” required that equity be achieved come hell or high water. So it was achieved through bald coercion, primarily by getting rid of men’s athletic opportunities. This is a perfect example of the inherent inability of liberalism to achieve “fairness” through positive means. Because fairness as they perceive it is an imaginary thing with no basis in reality. So they can only achieve it by taking things away, by tearing things down.

Just as they achieved “fairness” in Title IX by tearing down men’s athletics, so they seek to achieve “fairness” in political media by tearing down talk radio.

It is incumbent on all who value liberty to stand in their way. Not just in this one case because it is in our political self-interest to do so. But always and in every case because we cannot permit the destructive leveling tendency of socialist ideology to corrupt the American Experiment.

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