In this Internet business it seems to me that we are talking about liberty and competence. The obvious analogy is to the post office which is incompetent and which denies us the liberty of privatizing mail delivery. Federal Express on the other hand is quite competent and puts us at liberty because we don't like Federal Express we can have UPS.
It seems to me that we are making the same argument with respect to the fairness doctrine. The competence of talk radio is demonstrated by their ratings and advertising revenue. The liberty is demonstrated by the multitude of choices available to the listener. Hence, we conservatives have the argument of liberty and competence on our side.
I believe the American people are yearning for competence in government. On a companion thread, the author wonders if we will come out of the wilderness in four years or 40 years or, God forbid, never. We must find the arguments that will appeal to people. I am fully aware that Mike Dukakis failed utterly with a competence argument. But we are now entering a very grave recession, we have the history of the Bush administration punctuated by hurricane Katrina. We have the unending drumbeat that Bush is a moron ratified daily by the media. The nation as a whole believes that the Republican Party is incompetent.
The left will now abandon references to competence, believing they can swamp that consideration by appeals to self-interest. In times of recession or depression they might well be right. Save a man man from mortgage foreclosure and he has very little scruples about trading off abstract notions of confidence or liberty on the Internet or even on talk radio. Nevertheless, the argument must be made.
On an issue by issue basis we are almost doomed to lose. Handouts will always trump competence and liberty. The public must be brought to see that there is a overarching pattern afoot within the Democrat ranks which when seen as a whole constitutes one of the most breathtaking grabs after our liberty in American history.
Finally, the individual must be brought to see it will cost him dear. The price for not drilling in Anwar is paid at the pump. The price for declining to build coal plants appears in your electric bill. The price for the loss of liberty on the Internet will be compounded by the taxes you must pay to use it. The abstractions of liberty must be brought down, especially in this economic environment, to pocketbook issues and they must be presented so they will be seen to be one.
