Today I was reading Brad O’Leary’s Shut Up! America, and trying to wrap my head around his anti-Fairness Doctrine argument. It fell into place when I realized that from his perspective the airwaves should not be owned by the citizens of the US. The airwaves are a commodity to be bought and sold, and not part of the public commons.
As it exists now the airwaves are considered to belong to the people of the United States of America. Their agent, the US Gov. acting through the FCC, licenses this public domain spectrum and the fees go toward supporting the federal government.
The anti-Fairness Doctrine argument O’Leary makes suggests that the broadcast spectrum should never have been considered a public trust to begin with. From this extraordinary position it’s easy to see how those who don’t want everything in the world turned into a commodity to be bought and sold by corporations might be considered socialists.
From this hyper-Libertarian/Free Market perspective all of the following are clear indications of Socialist America:
Public airwaves
Public parks
Public education
Public domain
Streets and highways
bridges
police
teachers
civil servants
the military
the courts
citizenship
Congress
libraries
Universities
NASA
scientific research supported by government grants
fairy tales
traditional music
hymns
the church
Santa Claus
the Post Office
Hurricane and Tornado advance warning systems
communications satellites
medical research
social safety net for the elderly and indigent
medicine for your grandparents
national defense
national currency
the federal government
and our founding document that gives primacy to “We the people…”
not “To the highest bidder…”
From my perspective, supporting the above list is a moderate, in some ways even conservative, position. Simply keeping to the status quo is not a radical political belief. But, if you think things took a turn for the worse when John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay started pushing for their so-called “American System” economic plan nearly 200 year ago, then America has been racing headlong into socialism for centuries now.
I suppose what baffles me most about free market fundamentalists like O’Leary is why they think corporations should be privileged over citizens. The Fairness Doctrine was a (weak) effort to impel corporations to be good stewards of the public good awarded them by the American people. If the airwaves are a commodity to be bought and sold what’s to stop wicked liberal George Soros from buying all the airwaves and broadcasting Phil Donahue, Michael Moore, and Rachel Maddow 24/7?
Presumably, for free marketeers like O’Leary, outright ownership by the liberal elite is preferable to having federal government oversight that can be influenced by an informed citizenry working through the ballot box.
However, as this description of the American System indicates, this really has been the debate for nearly 200 years, and the same geographical areas that oppose it now opposed it then.
“Clay argued that the West, which opposed the tariff, should support it since urban factory workers would be consumers of western foods. In Clay’s view, the South (which also opposed high tariffs) should support them because of the ready market for cotton in northern mills. This last argument was the weak link. The South was never really on board with the American System and had access to plenty of markets for its cotton exports.”
One key difference is that back then it was Democrats, led by Andrew Jackson that opposed government money for infrastructure projects, and devout conservatives like John Quincy Adams that supported them.
