The Democrats’ talking points of the hour say that President
Bush and company are attempting to “stifle dissent” on matters
relative to the war against terrorism, Iraq in particular. After
the Republican National Committee released its first ad of the
election cycle, the Dems started yapping in unison. Ted Kennedy
called it an “attempt to stifle dissent.” His colleague John Kerry
called it a “reprehensible attempt to stifle dissent.” The state
party chair of New Hampshire, where the ad ran, went farther. As
far as she was concerned it was “neo-McCarthyism.” Democrat
National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe deviated from the script a
little. He just called the 30-second spot “insane.”
There’s no doubt America is experiencing a heightened level of
intolerance for differences of opinion. But the stifling is coming
from the political left, not the White House or the RNC. In fact,
the chilling rise of political intolerance will, if left
unfettered, make the PC language police and public school Nativity
Nazis seem downright Jeffersonian.
Some recent examples illustrate my point:
On the December 1 Hardball, host Chris Matthew’s asked
Howard Dean if he would “break up Fox” if he were elected
president. It wasn’t really a controversial question. Many liberals
want to prohibit news organizations from getting too large, and Fox
(actually News Corp.) is really, really big. The real surprise was
Dean’s answer: “On ideological grounds, absolutely yes.”
Apparently Dean swiftly realized he had just offended the First
Amendment, to say nothing of common decency. He immediately
equivocated, “I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox
or not.” Except that he just had.
On December 8, Dean’s rival John Kerry tried to kill another
media outlet before it could even get started. The National Rifle
Association wants to start a cable station to take advantage of the
media exemption in the new campaign finance laws. So Kerry filed a
complaint with the Federal Elections Commission to block it. “We
urge you to prevent the NRA from hijacking America’s airwaves with
the gun lobby’s money,” Kerry wrote. That is to say he doesn’t want
the NRA to use its own money to talk about the issues that matter
most to its members.
So, the probable nominee for president from one of America’s
major parties and a powerful U.S. Senator want to limit free speech
on ideological and political grounds.
Kerry’s letter to the FEC explained, “If the NRA has something
to say, it can play by the rules, just like the millions of people
in America who do every day.” Except that the Supreme Court’s
decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission makes
those rules for regular Americans a lot less, um, liberal.
In the name of getting regular people involved in politics
again, every branch of government has now officially signed on to
this truly stifling law. Essentially, a bunch of politicians passed
a law to make it harder for the American people to criticize them
and the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed it.
And let’s not forget the Clintons. In office, Bill flirted with
bringing back the Fairness Doctrine to silence talk radio, and his
IRS often audited the White House’s political enemies. Hillary, the
early odds-on-favorite for the Democrats’ nomination in 2008, has
spoken of the need to have a new “gate keeping” mechanism to filter
Internet content to protect the reputations of public persons such
as…herself.
The political left is playing a dangerous game; for
conservatives, for America, for anyone with an honest gripe about
their government or politicians. If Americans remain lax against
their advances on the First Amendment, it may leave us all,
literally, speechless.
