Posted on 03/02/2009 9:55:00 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
I’ve spent the last few days at the Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Meeting. Saturday I was part of a panel discussion on New Media and Talk Radio. The main subject was various methods by which the Administration and certain Members of Congress seek to restrict free speech of certain public discussions. When preparing for that, I realized there are parallels between the beginnings of America and now.
And parallels between King George III and President Barack Obama.
The first person to use the phrase “The United States of America” was the same man who taught residents of the nations from Massachusetts down to North Carolina that they were all Americans. That was Thomas Paine. His book, Common Sense, sold about 500,000 copies in 1776. But that revolutionary text reached most people in verbal form.
Most Americans then were illiterate. They learned what Paine wrote, and enough of them committed to the cause to begin the Revolutionary War, by hearing his words, not reading them. They heard those words and responded in thousands of taverns and other public places, the length and breadth of the nation. That is a nearly direct parallel to the new media today, where broadband, and audio, and video communications are allowing all Americans to talk to all other Americans directly, though in a haphazard way as yet.
There is another parallel between then and now. King George III sought to prevent Americans from having unknown, direct contacts with large numbers of other Americans. He had two methods of attempting such control.
One was in the Stamp Act, requiring all major documents including wills, court documents and newspapers to be published on paper bearing the royal seal. That requirement had two purposes. One was to extract taxes from the colonists. The other was control political speech.
The stamped paper could only be purchased from the Royal Governors of each state. And those gentlemen, appointed by the Crown, could refuse to sell paper to any editor/publisher whose views they found unacceptable.
Due to huge protests, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1774, However, there was another method of control by the King. All printing presses had to be licensed by the Crown, through the Royal Governors.
A number Members of Congress and some reporters on the left side of the main steam media have spoken in favor of reinstating the “Fairness” Doctrine. To make a long story short, that was a requirement established when there were very few broadcast outlets, far less than print media. On that scarcity basis, the Supreme Court upheld the Doctrine in the Red Lion case in 1969.
As everyone is well aware, today the print media are dying while the electronic media are thriving. The scarcity now is among newspapers and magazines. The “Fairness” Doctrine was abolished in 1987 as unnecessary.
In the D.C. Voting Rights bill that passed the Senates this week, Senator Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) offered a successful amendment to bar reinstatement of the Doctrine. But also in that bill was a successful amendment from Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) which would direct the FCC to take positive steps to enforce “diversity” among broadcasters. Diversity used to be a code word for whether the owners of stations are sufficiently black. Today, it may mean whether the on-air hosts are sufficiently leftwing, or whatever else a majority of the FCC want it to mean.
The other route to the same end is the proposed establishment of Community Boards. Those would decide whether each station was broadcasting programs which, in the sole view of the Boards, were serving the “local” interests of the listeners.
So, where is there a whiff of the tactics of King George in these modern actions? President Obama has announced that he opposes the reestablishment of the “Fairness” Doctrine. He has made no public statement on the other two ways of controlling the new media, especially talk radio. There are good reasons to believe that President Obama supports one or both of these other routes.
Both would censor the broadcast media who criticize the government the same way that King George sought to censor print media, by threatening their licenses to operate. That’s the clear and dangerous parallel between 1776 and 2009.
But if there are too many Americans who don’t know who King George was and what he did to control “his” colonies in North America, we are in even deeper trouble than just restriction of free speech on talk radio.
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About the Author: John Armor practiced law in the Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives on the Eastern Continental Divide in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
In the interests of full disclosure, the panel Mr. Armor took part in, was a joint project of the ACRU (see www.theacu.org) and Regular Folks United (see www.RegularFolksUnited.com) both of which seek to prevent censorship of any kind on radio and the Internet.
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John / Billybob
Headed off to bed — worth pinging for tomorrow bump. And to all a good night!
Upon reading the title of this thread, I just knew you were referring to King George 43.
**If You Liked King George, You’ll Love Barack Obama **
Isn’t that the truth? — irony, I know.
Great thanks! I can’t wait to read it.
Ping
I’m waiting, patiently, for the right tree to swing on.
Lord knows there’re enough breezes blowing them around.
...then who is his Gen. Cornwallis?
At this point, Rahm Emmanuel, the MSM and Robert Gibbs (weak, I know) come to mind.
Thanks for posting this, CB !!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
Thanks for the heads up! :^D
bump! bump! bump!
And we modern patriots here all remember what the colonial patriots did to King George!
Obama is a walking stool sample.
Thanks for the ping!
VERY CLEAR!! A Must View! How in good name could Chief Justice Roberts swear Zero in knowing these facts?
Specter in any case is Benedict Arnold.
Emanuel is Cornwallis.
That Rush is the modern Benjamin Franklin has been settled at CPAC.
But who will be our Washington?
Thank you for the ping and post.
Bumping for tomorrow...
Nitey nite!
Are you sure it wasn't Al Gore?
saving
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