Chavez implements the Fairness Doctrine in Venezuela

 
You may have heard that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez pulled the plug on the country's most popular television station. "He's castrating free press in Venezuela," said Valter Pereira, a senator for the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and member of the government's ruling coalition. "Why should we sit back, cross our arms and watch him destroy democratic institutions?"


No wonder the "progressives" love Chavez so much. His act of shutting down opposition media is precisely the strategy that so many U.S. leftists hope to employ by reinstating the so-called "fairness doctrine". Unable to compete in the marketplace of ideas, they hope to resurrect the ill-fated doctrine in order to censor conservative viewpoints.

The Democracy Project's commentary is spot on:

The ideas that rational planning can substitute for markets and that government ought to regulate speech are failed ones. Yet, progressive/liberal bigots like my Congressman, Maurice Hinchey, continue to advocate suppression of speech, through an Orwellian-named "fairness doctrine". Throw in an inability to develop a strategy to fight terrorism and add a dash of economic illiteracy. Then you really have to wonder how anyone can be fooled by the sweet bouquet of the left's bovine imagination.