The other great mandate of political equality is of course the First Amendment stricture:However, to render activist decisions, a liberal judge would easily find support from foreign sources given his or her distrust of American law and the enactments of the States. Then, the issue becomes not what the People or the framers of the Constitution thought, but: What do I think? What does the New York Times think?Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .The FCC, however, abridges the freedom "of speech or of the press" when it presumes to stipulate which among us are entitled to broadcast "in the public interest as a public trustee" - and which of us (almost the entire people) who are subject to arrest if they do what the FCC's licensees are legally entitled to do. That is censorship, and it is also the granting of a defacto title of nobility. It is presumably true that broadcasting as we know it could not exist in the absence of that censorship and those "titles of nobility" known as "licenses." But then, it is also presumptively true that a republic which was in place for a hundred years before radio transmission/reception was invented would have continued to work as well without without the institution of broadcasting for the succeeding generations up to the present day.The great problem of broadcasting "in the public interest as a public trustee" is that there is no guidance in the Constitution or any other legitimating source as to what broadcast transmission is "in the public interest." The broadcasters have addressed this conundrum by redefining "the press" to mean not the technology of printing ink on paper (irrespective of whether that is journalism, other nonfiction, or fiction) but journalism in whatever medium. And by redefining "freedom" to mean freedom of the holder of the title of nobility known as a "broadcast license," and none other. The broadcaster says exactly what The New York Times says, it just says it quicker and verbally instead of in print.
Superficially, freedom which is used in exactly the same way as the actually free press of The New York Times et al does not seem to infringe on freedom for the great unwashed (and unlicensed) masses. But that analysis takes for granted the existence of The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest as an establishment. Which is another way of saying that it does not notice the perspective of commercial mass-market journalism.
In the real world, commercial mass-market journalism is by its nature superficial (its deadlines make it so), negative (its need to attract attention drives it to try to make the potential reader/audience insecure if it does not find out the end of the story), and bullying (it is defensive because its practitioners fear the propanda power of their rivals, and arrogant because its propaganda power intimidates those outside its clique).
The arrogant bullying of The New York Times and the rest of wise-in-its-own-conceit "objective" journalism attempts to prevent anyone from daring to think that they have a right to disagree with The New York Times.
The American Revolution, In Reverse
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_6490.shtml ^Fine article, whose thrust is that the application of foreign decisions as precedent for interpreting the Constitution is nothing less than the reversing of the American Revolution.
Rush told the Democrat that the Democratic Party is too closely associated with the mainstream press, and take its support for granted so much that you are intellectually lazy. You are too closely associated with the mainstream press, and they are hemmoraging respect and is seen by ordinary Americans as a problem - and you are associated with those people and that problem. In fact, you guys do not tell the mainstream press what to think, it's the other way around. You follow the mainstream press.
Which this humble FReeper has been posting here for years. 26 posted on 01/19/2005 1:01:18 PM EST by conservatism_IS_compassion