The Fairness Doctrine, Part One: I'm not five.

If I were to sum up my views on what the government is responsible for, it would be this: to do for its citizens that which they cannot do for themselves. This is stuff like national security, law enforcement, fixing roads, etc. And though I don't like it when they go to far, I am in favour of safety nets, like Welfare and Medicare for those who legitimately need them and have no other choice (and I believe that the lack of other choice can be blamed in large part on the Church, but that's another entry). With everything else, just stop taking our money so we can do it ourselves.

The Fairness Doctrine does seem to have been founded out of good intentions. People want to be able to hear all sides on controversial debates. Sounds good to me. I'd like that, too. But here's where many good-intentioned causes go awry: we are given a goal that everyone wants and somehow convinced that government is the only way to see it done. It's like how I care about the poor, but think that the government is way too inefficient and impersonal to handle it properly. So I don't "Vote Out Poverty" and suddenly people think I'm a monster.

Things happen outside of politics, believe it or not. We can actually do things without the government. With The Fairness Doctrine, I can take care of the problem myself. Know how? It's easy, really. Say I feel that I have heard enough of one point of view on the radio or TV station I'm on. I can just change the station to hear/see something else! All by myself! [GASP!] Or, better yet, I can just TURN IT OFF. Then I can go research opinions for myself! "But how?" you may ask. Well, I'll get to that in the third section. But it's just plain insulting that the government thinks that I can't handle this myself. I'm a grown man, for crappin' out loud!

Another key problem with issues like this is, how I like to say, the difference between freedoms and rights. Freedoms are things that we are allowed to do and the government can't stop us, but we are responsible for attaining ourselves. Rights are things that the government has to actually make sure we have. See the difference? It's subtle, but very important. Take free speech for example, since it is an important issue here. We have the right to express ourselves. And with that right, we have the freedom to express whatever view we want. We also have the freedom to seek out any view that we want that other people are freely expressing. But, the government can't tell us what views to express. So it's not my right that I hear all sides of issues, but it is my freedom to hear them or express them myself. Make sense?

These TV and radio stations are private entities. In a free country (like we're supposed to be in), the government can't tell them what to say. Or what not to say. Or how much of certain things to say. Period.

Chuck Schumer made what may have at first appeared to be a good point, which is pretty good for him. Here's what he said about those opposing The Fairness Doctrine:

“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

And we are expected to believe that there is no difference between one-sided debate and hardcore porn. WTF, mate? The reason we censor certain things is because we don't want our children innocently flipping through channels and seeing things that their tender minds shouldn't be processing. Personally, I think it is far more dangerous for a five-year-old, while channel surfing to find The Disney Channel, to come across upwards of 3-4 adults in the throes of flagrante ardvarkus than to come across discussions about how raising the capital gains tax will lower tax revenues with no rebuttal in sight.

But, then again, I'm not Chuck Schumer.