Liberals like Ms. Allen want to have people fed a diet of processed information. They don't believe that people should be allowed to engage in the analysis of information, they want information presented to everyone as a fait accompli, its "truth" or validity already established.
I believe there are two main reasons for this, and both emanate directly from the basic tenets of liberalism:
1.) The first reason is that Liberals do not believe that people possess the capability to critically think about issues on their own. They believe that since everything is relative and that there are no absolutes, that normal people cannot distinguish this on their own, and it must be decided for them. The citizen cannot distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. This cuts to the heart of liberalism. It is why the adherents and followers of liberalism would be appalled if they really understood the contempt that they are generally held in by the people they look to for leadership.
This is a key and basic cleavage point in the difference between liberalism and conservatism.
Conservatives believe in individualism and self-sufficiency. Presented as an axiom, conservatives believe that if you set high standards for people, they will rise to the occasion and deliver to that level.
Liberals do not believe in individualism, they believe that people cannot survive and prosper without the intervention and aid of the community/government/etc., and they believe that setting standards for people to live up to is unfair to people, since everyone is different and standards are most often uniform.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but nearly EVERY liberal, even those who would deny it if asked directly, holds in their heart the following axiom: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Most run of the mill liberals would innocently agree that this is a great idea, because they do not have the intellectual rigor to "think beyond Stage One" as Thomas Sowell puts it. However, the liberals who DO think beyond stage one to at least stage two would deny this most vociferously, knowing full well the origin of this statement and what the open agreement to this statement would imply. You would have to administer truth serum to get them to tell you the truth on this one, but make no mistake, IT IS WHAT MOST LIBERALS BELIEVE, including the major politicians on the Democrat side, particularly Obama. It is why some of them scream "SLANDER" when they see this graphic I devised:
However, there are large numbers of them not clever enough to try to cover their trails that think comparing Obama to Che is great. Those are the ones too stupid to realize that by openly praising this connection, they are then ideologically undressed so that most thinking Americans can see them for what they are. In this category, I place the campaign workers who openly display the Che Guevara poster in their local Obama for President campaign headquarters.
2.) Secondly, The Liberals need to decide what is valid or invalid, right or wrong, because they do not trust others to reach the "correct" conclusions.
Like most of the people in the media, they do not trust individuals to "think correctly". It is why the vast majority of them see the processing of information before presenting it to the populace as a "sacred duty", a "trust". However, like the person who cannot see their faults because they are taped to their back, the fact that the media have generally held views on what is right and wrong and how to present that to people to get them to reach the same conclusions is not seen as a fault, but a virtue.
If it were not so serious, it would be quite funny in the way they view conservatives. They think that most of us here on FR think they have a giant conglomeration of media interests that all get together, have meetings to figure out the way to present the news, and issue talking points to everyone.
I admit to wondering about that on occasion, especially after seeing the way the word "gravitas" was used in the 2000 election cycle. Now, that is not a word that you hear every day, then...boom! Every single newscast, newspaper and political commentary seemed to mention it, referring to the lack of it in candidate George W. Bush. I had to force myself to remember that this comes from an industry where people (Brian Williams and Dan Rather are great examples of them) who speak words read from teleprompters are viewed as demigods.
The truth of the matter is, they don't have an organized information cartel in that sense. They all simply have the same intellectual underpinnings that allow them to reach the same conclusions, and they also share a lack of imagination that allows words like "gravitas" to catch fire and ricochet around the media world like a tank of compressed gas with the end lopped off.
The bottom line is: Liberals do NOT believe in the First Amendment. They believe the practice of free speech is dangerous.
And it is, as the British found out in 1776 when Thomas Paine authored "Common Sense". The Freedom of Speech IS dangerous when it IS the truth, and YOU disagree with it. One of the most Orwellian facets to liberalism is their disturbing insistence on the malleability of words and their meanings. They believe that changing the meaning of a word can change the nature of what it defines. A good example of this is the substitution of the term "gay" for "homosexual". (If you don't believe me, at the next party you go to, try using the word "homosexual" instead "gay" when discussing an issue. People of "good taste" will look at you as if you just spit in the punch bowl.)
However, contrary to what most liberals think, no amount of hate speech legislation or passage of things like the "Fairness Doctrine" will change the nature of reality. That is, if we don't let them. As John Adams famously said, "Facts are stubborn things..."
Let us do all we can to help the facts stay stubborn.