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It's odd how I sometimes look at my recent posts and find a theme woven into them. It isn't that the theme is a surprise to me, something I hadn't realized was on my mind, as that the posts hadn't been intended to pursue that theme.
In Politics is Odious Joe Klein's anemic examination of the witless and intolerant left was scorned. In For Example Vaclav Klaus' responds, as a rational and freedom loving person, to the sad reality that "the dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced".
These are just a couple of posts from the front page here. There are many others. The closed minded intolerance of power politics, especially on the left, is more of a world threat than climate change. It is not only more destructive, it is pervasive, affecting every field of endeavor. And it is growing . . . again.
Why do liberals like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., keep trying to tell the rest of us what political opinions we must listen to in the media?I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, these attempts to censor and stifle are ludicrous. They make those who advocate such things look idiotic. OTOH, there seems to be so many idiots in the world that they won't be lonely, and may once again gain the power to suffocate society. Then we'll have to go through that whole boring conservative revolution thing again, and overshoot the other way.Feinstein says she is “looking at” reviving the Fairness Doctrine to counteract the decidedly conservative bent of talk radio. Former President Reagan and a Democratic Congress repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. . .
We remind the senator that talk radio emerged only after decades of federal bureaucrats suppressing the expression of conservative viewpoints from the public airwaves. If Feinstein doubts this history, she should read “The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment” by Fred Friendly. The former CBS News president details how John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were especially enthusiastic users of the Fairness Doctrine to suppress political criticism of their policies from religious conservatives.
Feinstein’s comments are of a piece with other liberals who in recent months have been loudly talking about reviving the Fairness Doctrine, most notably Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. There is also that infamous “legislative fix” conversation that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., deny ever having.
I'd like to see a real examination of the leftist disease, something like we once had for fascism. We need to sensitize ourselves to the destructiveness of this impulse to suffocate society. It's all bad, and it seems to be a core principle of leftist thinking. It need not be so. A real liberal, or leftist, would take to the streets to denounce such behavior.
Update:
Mehlman obviously hasn't given much thought to the dictum that no one knowingly does evil. Not true without exception, it nonetheless tells you something important about human motivation, self-understanding and concern for the good opinion of others, if only some others. But that's by the way. More alarming is Mehlman's apparent belief that meaning well is some sort of virtue irrespective of what counts for the person concerned as meaning well, as 'doing good things'. Even if it's racial oppression, why, even if it's genocide... so long as it's meant well, then the meaning well is 'at least' something. Others might find this more doubtful.