Enemies of Liberty

Brent Bozell, who knows better than you do what you should be watching on TV and wants the government to enforce his tastes with the power of law, is outraged.  That's not surprising, because that's what Bozell does.  He watches TV he doesn't like and then complains about it.

If I were to tell you that sex on TV is incessant, you’d tell me you already know that. To which I’d tell you that you really, really don’t have a grasp of just how much sex is steaming up the tube.

Actually, Brent, we probably do, since we're the people who are out here watching, and we watch pretty much what we want.  We can do that because there's more TV being broadcast and cabled and TIVOed and webcast than ever before, and not everyone's taste runs to "Leave It To Beaver" and CBN.  There's no reason why anyone has to watch anything he or she isn't utterly delighted with.

Bozell, however, doesn't see it that way.  He wants fines levied against the people who give audiences what audiences want, and he's gaining traction in Washington with Republicans who used to think government should get smaller and have less control of individual behavior.  In these days of big government conservatism, Bozell has found plenty of conservative busybodies who imagine that the American people are too stupid to make their own decisions.

Busybody Numero Uno is Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who seems in some kind of race to replace Robert Byrd as most appalling senator.  Stevens is the perfect Bush-era Republican, a big government prig who wildly overestimates his own wisdom and recognizes no limit of government power.  He recently grabbed $223 million to build a bridge in his home state that came to be known as "the bridge to nowhere," since that's where it went.  When a couple of Republicans sobered up, in face of record deficits and diving credibility, and tried to take the bridge out of the budget, Stevens threw a tantrum and threatened to resign.  Rather than doing the sensible thing and letting him, Republicans reached a compromise that was at best meaningless and at worst deceitful.  They stripped the bridge funding out of the budget, congratulated each other for a job well done, and then gave the money to Alaska anyway, no strings attached.  I, for one, will not be surprised if Alaska uses the money to build the bridge.

Bush Republicans are not, of course, satisfied with merely increasing federal spending.  They also want to take over your personal life.  From conception to death, they want to meddle in every personal decision you make.  Stevens wants to expand government control of what you see, hear and read.

Not wanting to seem unreasonable, he recently convened a meeting to find some reasonable way to gut the First Amendment.  At the meeting, the aforementioned Bozell said this:

We are not talking about little indecencies here. We are talking about big, big indecencies.  And I want to ask people around this room, and our friends at the networks, to tell me where there is a market demand for the things we are now talking about protecting.

Most of the examples of deviate behavior Bozell cited took place on the highest rated TV show in the country, CSI, which would seem to  indicated that there is, indeed, substantial "market demand" for exactly the kind of programming Bozell watches but does not like.   

The logic behind regulation of the broadcast media has always been that the airwaves are a shared and finite resource owned by everyone, and thus need to be regulated by government.  It is Stevens' stated goal to expand the reach of government into content that travels by other, not-publicly-owned media as well.  Specifically, he wants government to censor media that are available only to people who ask and then pay for what they get.  With Bozell nodding in approval, Senator Stevens wants the government to regulate what's on your cable, CDs, HBO, satellite and apparently -- as they say in Hollywood's one-sided contracts -- "any and all media now in existence or yet to be created." 

The modern Republican vision is becoming more and more clear.  Today's Bush conservatives believe that government should sponsor religion, should have the power to arrest and hold American citizens without charges, and keep anything it damned well pleases secret.  Now we've got Stevens and his totalitarian cohort giving government the power to restrict speech in any and all media.

I am left with only a single hope: The American people.  Thankfully, they seldom let me down.  In the particular case of government regulation of television, a  Russell Research survey conducted mid-November showed that while 81% of parents are concerned about what is available on TV,  only 9% think it's the government's business to regulate it.  American parents believe, God bless 'em, that the best way to regulate what children see on TV is for parents to be more involved in their children's lives.  Clearly, all but a crackpot few think the government ought to let parents be parents.

The Republican Party is doing its best to ensure that crackpot few prevail.  Republicans who used to mock the nanny state now seek to expand it.  Stevens promises legislation in January, which guarantees that next year's Congressional elections will consist of Republicans claiming that people who don't vote for the law are in favor of child pornography.  That, in turn, will guarantee that at least some form of terrible legislation gets passed so that Democrats don't get smeared as pedophiles.  The end result is that we will be significantly less free, and that Tony Soprano is going to have to learn how to talk like Wally Cleaver.

Nick Gillespie over at Hit and Run says this about the whole thing:

With Stevens threatening to pass legislation on the issue in 2006, this is a good a time to tell your congressmen and senators to fuck off—while you still can without enduring a fine for indecency.

It's also a good time to marvel at how the party of small government has changed, and to note who the real enemies of American liberty are.

Comments

[Charlie Gordon]

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I think that most members of Congress, regardless of what side of the aisle they're on, went there wide-eyed and innocent and ready to be good stewards of the power and money intrusted to them by their constituents. (Not all, of course. Even I am not that naive) It seems the second they walk through the door their brains are removed and replaced with two thoughts: "I need to expand my power and influence," and "I need to be reelected." This is another reason I am in favor of term limits. If they know they can't stay there for life, maybe they'll actually do something for the betterment of the country instead of the furtherence of their own political career.

[Lee]

I partially agree. Regulate broadcast, and I have no problem. Regulate cable, and this conservative with libertarian tendencies will be very PO'd. The problem with our system is that when the party you agree with most gets into power (the Republicans) instead of governing on what they promised, they govern on keeping power.

Therefore you have a supposed conservative President introducing a big new prescription program that nobody likes. (Conservatives know it won't work and Liberals say it is not enough.)

And this K Street/Abramoff corruption stuff is getting bad.

Though I find it hilarious/frustrating when I hear Nancy Pelosi talk about "The Culture of Corruption," when both she and Harry Reid have also dealt with the man and received funds from him as well.