Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, and the Fairness Doctrine

Freedom of assembly must, of logical and political necessity, be completely united with the freedom of association; this is so that both can then requisitely create, therefore, the needed composite situation of assembling and associating, as the civil liberty cited can be exercised through the civil right that supports its proper and legal, constitutional, existence.
In notable historical support of this assertion, e.g., the Constitution of the formerly (or, is it presently?) existing Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (AKA Russia) had among the greatest listing of constitutional civil liberties in it of any modern state; but, a Soviet citizen, especially under Stalin, could have been easily killed, in fact, for trying to effectuate any civil right for the proposed sake of attaining the actual exercise of a Soviet, constitutional, civil liberty. Q. E. D.

If the Obama Administration, for instance, should obnoxiously help push through the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress some version of the Orwellian-named “Fairness Doctrine” for talk radio, the above discussion may not, however, prove to be just so airily theoretical. Freedom of speech is truly wonderful- if one is permitted to hear it.
Under the suitably unctuous guise of, thus, promoting some supposed fairness, there comes into being, sooner or later, public censorship of the most effective and insidious kind, the censorship of silence; it will be then effectively sustained, by the government, in the ironic name of aiding an interpretation of assumed “fairness” done on behalf of the American (or, is it Soviet?) people. Political opposition, once loud and large on the radio, will be increasingly deflected and dulled, modified and milked, through the creative absence of speech, as maintained by quotas, “balance,” or other such interesting Machiavellian devices.

Paper guarantees of rights, it can be noted, are meaningless; this is whenever the free exercise of those rights are or become so constrained, restricted, or qualified as to be then practically unobtainable, in the real world of men and events. And, this can be still said, in all fairness, to the highly important subject now at hand. In any event, freedom (whether interpreted through civil liberties or civil rights) isn’t free.