The Liberal Marketplace of Ideas: You're Illegal
newsisyphus.blogspot.com
By NewSisyphus
During the Presidential campaign of last year first Howard Dean and then John Kerry let is slip on more than one occasion that the first thing they would do as President of the United States would be to “investigate” Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and other elements of conservative media. What, exactly, they would be investigated for was never made quite clear, though the suggestion was enough to whip their minions (Memo to Chairman of Washington State Democratic Party: not a type of steak ) into a self-righteous frenzy.
Since our time at the University of California we’ve noticed a constant among liberals everywhere: they simply cannot stand free speech unless they’re the only ones who get to speak. The rise of Fox News, conservative talk radio and the Blogosphere assaults the modern liberal’s sensibilities on so many levels, we are actually starting to believe it is literally driving them crazy.
Take John Kerry’s recent appearance at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, for example. As reported by P.J. O’Rourke, Kerry had a number of monstrously stupid observations to make about conservative media, and, in so doing, revealed both his contempt for the marketplace of ideas and just how badly he and his ilk are being beaten in it.
Dusting off the standard liberal playbook, Kerry first trotted out a long-discredited “survey” that revealed that a large number of people who rely on Fox News for their news believed both that WMD had been found in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 to prove that Americans are, well, stupid:
Addressing the audience of tame Democrats, Kerry explained his defeat. "There has been," he said, "a profound and negative change in the relationship of America's media with the American people. . . . If 77 percent of the people who voted for George Bush on Election Day believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq--as they did--and 77 percent of the people who voted for him believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11--as they did--then something has happened in the way in which we are talking to each other and who is arbitrating the truth in American politics. . . . When fear is dominating the discussion and when there are false choices presented and there is no arbitrator, we have a problem."
And guess who is to be the arbitrator? The people who are going to make sure that Americans don’t get such stupid ideas in their heads and think only good thoughts about people like Senator Kerry?
"We learned," Kerry continued, "that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
You may be surprised to hear that the MSM “did a pretty good job of discerning” over the last year, given that the New York Times, CBS and the BBC all had to fire lead personnel over the fact that they just damn well made stuff up out of whole cloth in service to an obviously partisan political agenda. But then, if you’re reading this, your part of a dangerous sub-culture, aren't you?
And what, Senator, are we going to do about these dangerous people that keep disagreeing with the MSM and have the nasty habit of not keeping their ill-informed, non-making-stuff-up mouths shut? Here we see the cold iron of the liberal’s tendency to want to shut their opponents up that lies behind the calm façade and the Birkenstocks.
[Meeting host and Boston Globe columnist Thomas] Oliphant responded, in a responsible mainstream media way, saying, "Going back to the economics of it, though, isn't this why God created the Sherman and Clayton acts?"
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"That's something," Kerry said, "that a president with a veto pen and with the right of proposal can achieve.”
Who in the world is acting in restraint of trade, given the intense competition in the world of journalism generally and the cable news networks specifically? One wonders what Oliphant and Kerry are thinking about here, though it's probably not liberal papers like the San Francisco Chronicle that run under trade-restraining agreements with their competitors to share the lucrative Sunday paper market. At the very least, their comments make it clear that, had they the power, they would now be using the full force and weight of the United States Department of Justice to shut you and us the hell up.
From campus speech codes, to stacked Sunday morning “news” shows to the smothering social pressure created by liberal racial politics and political correctness, liberals have shown that they cannot handle the free marketplace of ideas. Instead of dusting themselves off and throwing themselves back into the argument, they grasp for ways of declaring those they disagree with illegal.
O’Rourke concluded that the night he spoke this words, Kerry had, in effect, gone beyond the pale in what is acceptable in American political discourse:
It's hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable. Henry Wallace never quite managed, or George Wallace either. But Kerry's done it. American free speech needs to be submitted to arbitration because Americans aren't smart enough to have a First Amendment, and you can tell this is so, because Americans weren't smart enough to vote for John Kerry.
We take comfort in knowing that liberals lack both the means and the ability to effect their desires, given their current electoral position and the slight problem of the Constitution of the United States. Further, as we have remarked before, conservatives continue to win the arguments of the day because, as a system of ideas, conservatism continues to explain the reality around us and cause and effect much, much more effectively than modern liberalism.
But that comfort is hindered by the knowledge that the old problem continues: conservatives merely think that liberals are wrong, while liberals think—really, actually think—that conservatives are evil.
And, hey, you’d do anything you could to stop evil, right ?
Even if it means threatening their candidates, shooting up their campaign headquarters, lying to millions to discredit them or trying to steal elections. |
