The imagery that you see here on the TechLiberationFront site is a clever little rhetorical flourish, I think. We’re mostly free-market types, but our Maoist-Soviet-Che Guevara-ish imagery skewers the idea that the political left has a lock on revolutionary ideas, dissent, civil liberties, and – oh, I don’t know – gusto.
So I’m delighted to find a Web site in a similar vein from none other than the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They have a site up called StopLiberalCensorship.com, which carries a revolutionary (if partisan) message:
Free speech is under attack.
As Democrats in Congress eagerly line up to legislate what you hear on the radio it begs the question: what’s next? Newspapers? There’s no end in sight to their power grab.
It’s about the Fairness Doctrine, the idea of requiring media to apportion their messages and content based on political judgments and direction. James Gattuso and other TLFers have rightly criticized it in spades. Adam specifically called out Democrats’ abandonment of free speech here.
The site seeks people to sign a petition saying that “Republicans should do everything in their power to defeat the Democrats’ attempts to trample our First Amendment rights.”
It’s a welcome turn of the tables to see Republicans on the barricades – in berets, perhaps? – defending freedom. Viva la revolucion!
S. 1748, the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2007 is the Senate bill to abolish the Fairness Doctrine.
Update: Here’s the vote on an amendment to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from repromulgating the fairness doctrine. Forty-seven Democrats (and the independent who caucuses with the Democrats) voted against it.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.