How can Obama defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban if he can't even win the War on Fox News?
Levity aside, this has been some disturbing stuff, people. All those old chestnuts and bromides about "chilling effect on free speech" and "slippery slope" that people love to bust out at the drop of a hat? This is what they're about. The Executive Branch of the government doesn't get to decide that the people that are saying not good things are suddenly not "real journalists". That's not their job. And they just might be a little bit biased in their decision making process.
If George Bush had decided in 2005 that Keith Olbermann wasn't a real journalist (and oh, the jokes I could make there...) and that MSNBC wasn't a real news network the hue and cry would have been heard from orbit. And yet the partisan point of view coming from MSNBC land is as undeniable as that of Fox - just from a different direction.
When the Left is out of power, we are continuously told that the only answer to speech is more speech, that dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and that we are but a moment away from fascism cutting off our right to say and think as we will.
So why, when the Left finally gains power, is it the first impulse of so many of those same people to silence anyone that dares have the temerity to dissent?
"Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee" is not an argument born from strength - either strength of conviction or political strength. It's a reaction born from the realization that things aren't going according to plan, and the panicked idea that if we could just shut those people up that would fix everything.
But it won't. And the bitter precedent you set today can come around to harm you tomorrow.
Recent Comments