Free Speech And The House Of Representatives

I recently began subscribing to a newsletter that is a daily reflection of the Founding Fathers thoughts and beliefs. I got one late last week that really hit home with this blogger.

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."

-- Benjamin Franklin (writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 9 July1722)

Reference: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Labaree, ed., vol. 1(27)

Freedom of thought and speech is the lifes blood of bloggers. Which is why so many of us are up in arms about this.

Talk radio’s suspicions of a movement to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine were confirmed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday June 24 during her comments at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. When John Gizzi, an editor for Human Events asked Speaker Pelosi whether she favored a return of the Fairness Doctrine, she told him an unhesitating “yes,” reports Gizzi.

Moreover, when Gizzi asked if she supports the Broadcaster Freedom Act, “She added that ‘the interest in my caucus is the reverse’ and that New York Democratic Rep. ‘Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now,’ he writes.

Representative Slaughter (D-NY) introduced the 2004 MEDIA Act to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and reintroduced it in 2005 as the Fairness and Accountability in Broadcasting Act.

Don't kid yourselves my friends...this will not stop with the Broadcast Media. Once implimented, the "Fairness" Act will eventually come to apply to blogs. Congress has no faith in anything that they can not control. They will eventually mandate that there be an even number of blogs on the left, center and right in every state. That means that the center right blogosphere in Minnesota will have to be cut and the center/left blogosphere in Utah will suffer the same fate!

Ben Franklin knew what he was saying when he said that there was no "public liberty without freedom of speech". Regardless of where that speech appears or whom it apparently favors today, a free society must encourage the free exchange of ideas. It is the foundation of our country and we can not allow Rep. Pelosi and her ilk to take it away from us all.