As has been mentioned here before, the Media Research Center is heading up the Free Speech Alliance (FSA). Made up thus far of sixty-five organizations, the FSA is dedicated to protecting the freedom of speech of all practitioners of conservative and Christian talk radio from any and all government regulatory censorship.
Well here is an excellent piece by Peter Ferrara of the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), a Free Speech Alliance member organization, that appeared in Sunday's Washington Times.
This essay captures perfectly the other half of the argument we are making. Just as Rush, Sean, Mark et. Al. have the First Amendment-guaranteed Freedom to Speak, We the People have the First Amendement-guaranteed Freedom to Listen.
The Left's attempts to take away the former inherently abridge the latter too.
We will at this point allow Mr. Ferrara to speak expertly for himself.
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April 6, 2009 - 10:35 ET by KC MulvilleI've always objected to the idea that because government has some supposed interest in an "informed" electorate, that there is any government authority to force every market to have a balance of opinion.
Government has no right to enforce rationality. If you want to vote for Barack Obama because he's black, it doesn't matter whether anyone else thinks you're being irrational. You can vote for whoever you want, for whatever reason. More precisely, you don't need to offer a "valid" reason for your vote. You don't have to justify it.
Therefore, since you don't need to justify the rationality of your vote, I deny that the government has any right to enforce "rational balance." Who the hell are they to insist that you must listen to both sides?
I buy the argument that the government can prevent anyone from blocking a viewpoint. But I deny that government has any right to offer a "balance" of viewpoints.