{"id":1185,"date":"2010-11-19T05:00:43","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2010-11-19T05:00:43","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T12:00:43","slug":"diverse-voices-in-the-marketplace-of-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1185","title":{"rendered":"Diverse Voices in the Marketplace of Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.\u00a0 For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.\u00a0 ~John F. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Next Monday, November 22,\u00a0marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.\u00a0 My oldest son, Stephen, and I will be making our way to Dallas\u00a0the Saturday after Thanksgiving for\u00a0his doctor’s appointment at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While in the city, we plan on visiting Dealey Plaza, the site where\u00a0President\u00a0Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.\u00a0\u00a0In my 44 years of life, this will be my first trip to Dallas (suggestions for good BBQ places would be welcomed and appreciated).\u00a0 As a student of history and politics, I am looking forward to taking my son to that (in)famous spot where\u00a0one of our country’s most patriotic and charismatic leaders was felled by an assassin’s bullet.<\/p>\n

Even though I do\u00a0not share many of Kennedy’s beliefs (although he was more conservative than the present generation of Kennedys), I do share his belief in the\u00a0intelligence and discernment of the American people.\u00a0 That belief, sadly, is under attack in many of our institutions\u00a0today, including the worlds of politics, religion, and business.<\/p>\n

One of the front lines of attack is on the various 24-hour news channels.\u00a0 Love them or hate them, both Fox News Channel and MSNBC are not only purveyors of straight news, but also of\u00a0strong opinions.\u00a0 Most reasonable observers\u00a0understand that Fox’ opinion makers\u00a0lean\u00a0right while MSNBC’s lean left.\u00a0 No one will mistake\u00a0Sean Hannity\u00a0for a liberal firebrand\u00a0and no one will confuse Keith Olbermann for a conservative pundit.<\/p>\n

As a conservative, I watch Fox News almost exclusively.\u00a0 There are times when I will change channels to see what the talking heads\u00a0on MSNBC\u00a0are saying.\u00a0 Truth be told, I can’t stand to listen very long to any of the MSNBC lineup, even former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough.\u00a0 I’m sure that there are many folks, including some of my readers, who feel the same way about Fox News, affectionately dubbed Faux News by so many on the left.<\/p>\n

Although I do not care for the opinions of Olbermann, Madow, Matthews, Shultz, or O’Donnell, I would never support a move to censor their opinions.\u00a0 They have a right to be wrong, but I will defend their First Amendment right to freely express their beliefs.\u00a0 I simply trust Americans to be able to discern between competing ideas and values and to change the channels accordingly.\u00a0 I do not need the government to do that for me!<\/p>\n

Likewise, John F. Kennedy believed that when the government or other institutions became so afraid that they would not\u00a0“entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values,”\u00a0<\/em>that this revealed that\u00a0the leaders of those institutions were in reality\u00a0afraid of\u00a0the people themselves.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Sen.\u00a0Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is afraid, very afraid!\u00a0 How else to explain his idea to prevent the American people judge competing ideas for themselves<\/a>.\u00a0 Well, at least judging any ideas coming from Fox News or\u00a0MSNBC.\u00a0 You see,\u00a0he would rather the\u00a0FCC force both\u00a0Fox News and MSNBC off the air instead of allowing Amercans to view and decide for themselves.\u00a0 Rockefeller opines:<\/p>\n

“There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’ It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future.”\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think I know where Rockefeller’s bug is located, but . . .\u00a0 Let’s get this straight.\u00a0 A sitting United States Senator thinks that Big Brother would be doing the American people a “big favor” if the FCC banned Fox News and MSNBC.\u00a0 Not only is that anathema to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment, but evinces a deep-seated fear that establishment leaders like Rockefeller have of people being able to judge between competing ideas.<\/p>\n

He, unfortunately, is not alone in his attitude.\u00a0\u00a0Jay Rockefeller\u00a0may have made the “mistake” of being more open and transparent about what he really believed, but\u00a0too many people\u00a0in positions of power — in government, business, or religion — fear the free-flow of information in the public marketplace of ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead of encouraging more speech, some leaders would rather censor speech\u00a0that\u00a0they find offensive or “bad.”\u00a0 They would rather silence voices that do not fit into their neat and tidy view of the world.<\/a>\u00a0 But, as Alan Dershowitz, famed attorney and Harvard Law Professor once said, “The best answer to bad speech is good speech<\/em>.”\u00a0 That’s\u00a0a pretty good idea that trumps censorship.\u00a0 I think President Kennedy would approve!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.\u00a0 For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.\u00a0 ~John F. Kennedy Next Monday, November 22,\u00a0marks the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,21,22,34,1],"tags":[79,401,408,473,543,630,635,683,733,741,3391,882,901],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom-of-speech","category-freedoms","category-government","category-politics","category-uncategorized","tag-alan-dershowitz","tag-fox-news","tag-free-speech","tag-hannity","tag-jay-rockefeller","tag-madow","tag-marketplace-of-ideas","tag-msnbc","tag-odonnel","tag-olbermann","tag-politics","tag-scarborough","tag-shultz"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-j7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}