What is Fair?

Some months ago I had a very heated discussion with a man about what is right and what is wrong with his and my political philosophy. This discussion went on for three days by e-mail and extracted so much negative energy from me that I needed a full week to recover. We said harsh things to each other concerning how wrong headed we each were. It was a very negative!

He was a no-compromise environmentalists liberal and I am a conservative that believes we have to try and bring everyone's needs into the discussion, that is, without compromise we will never obtain results that we all can live with. The environment, the military, foreign policy, freedom of speech, patriotism and most importantly, what is right about America. He, being a liberal, thought America is on the wrong side of most issues and I think just the opposite.

One of the things that came up in our rant, and came up again on the floor of the Senate today, actually I heard a sound bite on Rush today, was the Fairness Doctrine or something akin to it.

I believe it was Senator Rangel, a Democrat from New York, that was complaining that Limbaugh's show was dominating the air waves on the military radio stations for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was saying the troops need another perspective on the world, like the ones that come from failed liberal left radio stations like Air America.

Al Frankin's ultra left station is dominated by anti- America, anti-freedom, military hating liberals. Rangel wants to take time away from Rush's show to put on Air America, but the troops don't want Air America, they want Rush. Still, Rangel figures it isn't fair that Limbaugh should have a such a dominate position, the troops, after all, need to hear the other side of the story.

Hear is a little back ground on the Fairness Doctrine - it proposed that every radio station must balance out it's programming with both sides of an issue, no matter what the issues are or if the general public wants it or not, the station must provide both. The real problem came form the advertisers. They don't want to be associated with both sides of an issue. So if the law says the station must provide both points of view, the advertisers will drop their advertising and the station goes broke.

It isn't too difficult to see how the liberals could stop a successful conservative program like Rush Limbaugh, or at least provide free air time for a losing liberal left program like Air America.

luckily when Ronald Reagan came into office he changed all that by dumping that law and the liberals have been complaining about it ever since. Now the complaining is back on center stage.