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March Madness: Nanny State 1 – Freedom 0

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 28, 2014
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Category: Archives, Government, Humanism, Socialism

Jeanne Mandeville is the School of St. Mary’s health-room director for kindergarten-through-eighth-grade. Loved by parents and children alike, Ms. Mandeville has been known as the school’s Tooth-Fairy for many years because she helped students in the final stages of a tooth falling out. For the children, going to the school’s Tooth Fairy was a rite-of-passage; a badge of honor in a child’s growing up years. But not all liked Ms. Mandeville’s role as Tooth Fairy. A complaint was emailed to Susan Rogers, Executive Director of the State Board of Dentistry. [Tulsa World] In response to the complaint, Ms. Rogers warned that,

Maybe a kid avoids a dentist because they know she’ll (Mandeville) do it and it will be cheaper. She may not be able to evaluate things that need to be evaluated…There are so many diseases in your mouth that can happen…There’s biological waste there. Someone needs to ask where it’s going…A general citizen is not allowed to go pull several kids’ teeth in a row; that is illegal practice of dentistry. It’s technically a felony. [Tulsa World]

Ms. Rogers stated that the complaint will be investigated because “…the dentistry board has authority over anyone determined to be practicing dentistry, whether they know they are technically ‘practicing dentistry’ or not.” [Tulsa World]

The State of Oklahoma has approximately 175 agencies, boards, commissions, and offices charged with varying degrees of oversight ranging from abstracts and boll weevils to wheat, wildlife, and women. Although not all have the authority to have someone charged with a felony for violating its rules, many have the ability to interject their regulatory noses into the lives of citizens and their businesses. [Oklahoma Department of Libraries] Most have worthy and important roles to play in governing and providing for the wishes of the people, but something has gone wrong with the regulatory process.

As government involves itself with an ever expanding array of concerns for its citizens’ welfare, various occupations and professions are swept into the net of regulation. Few complaints are heard from these regulated professions and occupations whose prestige and bank balances are elevated as competition is restricted by limiting ease of entry and prohibition of competing services.

Government intrusion and over-regulation in the lives of its citizens have grown exponentially since the New Deal and beginning in 1936 with the court’s exceptionally expansive interpretation of the Constitution’s general welfare clause. Laws and regulations have become repressive tools of a nanny-state government interfering in the lives of a free people capable of making rational decisions without government interference.

But in the larger picture of government interference in the lives of a free people, over-regulation of businesses, occupations, and professions is only one facet of the general trend toward organizing a socialistic society. This trend is the direct result of the rapid abandonment over the last three-quarters of a century of the Christian worldview upon which the nation was founded. In its place has risen the humanistic worldview which has been embraced by the institutions of American life and most of its leadership. Christianity leads to truth and freedom. Humanism leads to relativism and socialism whose ultimate end is totalitarianism.

Writing about America 180 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville described this new type of despotism that would eventually threaten democracies.

I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls…Above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed. It would be like a fatherly authority, if, father-like, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood; it prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it. It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs, supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life?…

Thus, the ruling power, having taken each citizen one by one into its powerful grasp and having molded him to its own liking, spreads it arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of social life with a network of petty, complicated, detailed, and uniform rules through which even the most original minds and the most energetic of spirits cannot reach the light in order to rise above the crowd. [Tocqueville]

Tocqueville did not have a name for this new despotism, but today we know it as socialism. Socialism is humanism’s template for organizing society and is inherently domineering, restrictive, and restraining in the details of life and ultimately leads to loss of freedom.

The political/intellectual/bureaucratic class will deny they are socialists or that their actions are socialistic by nature. However, their denials appear similar to those of the small boy who denies he ate the chocolate chip cookies even though his face and hands are smeared with chocolate and cookie crumbs. Hmmm. Children, teeth, chocolate…cavities? I’m sure the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry will have something to say about this.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Dylan Goforth, “Tooth Fairy to be extracted,” Tulsa World, March 22, 2014, A-1.

“Oklahoma State Agencies, Boards, and Commissions,” Oklahoma Department of Libraries, September 2, 2013. http://www.odl.state.ok.us/sginfo/abc/index.htm (accessed March 24, 2014).

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 805-806.

The Fragility of Free Speech in America

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 21, 2014
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Category: Constitution, Government, Socialism, Truth

The First Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” The free exercise of religion has been under assault by the liberalism for a number of years and the assault has accelerated significantly in the last two or three years. Attacks on free speech are increasing but of more recent occurrence.

Attacks on free speech increased significantly with efforts to classify certain opinions as hate speech. The problem with prohibiting hate speech is one of determining what is and what is not hate speech. Most often, the efforts at eliminating hate speech are aimed at the “content” of the speech rather than the intolerable mode of expressing the speech (e.g., violence). Here we are not talking about profanity or obscene language that offends the common decency of a civil society. Speech that is bad or hurtful may not be obscene or profane, and slander and libel laws are available where necessary. Also, enforced tolerance through limitations on the content of hate speech may have the opposite effect—that of promoting even more hateful speech or worse. Most importantly, any limit on free speech, however hateful or hurtful, is a slippery slope at whose base is an abyss in which free speech is not only lost but other liberties as well.

As America races toward a monolithic, all-powerful, all-knowing government, free speech is under attack in a variety of ways.

Government approved speech

We recently wrote of the federal government’s first steps at limiting freedom of the press through proposed Federal Communications Commission’s monitoring of newsrooms to determine bias in the provision of critical information needs as determined by the government. [See: “The New Ministry of Truth 2014”]

Government limits on speech through regulation

But government reach goes beyond the newsroom and into cyberspace. Health-wise, Steve Cooksey was a walking time bomb. He was obese, lethargic, asthmatic, chronically ill, and a pre-diabetic. Ignoring the advice of medical personnel and others, he chose to eat a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet (beef, pork, chicken, leafy vegetables). He lost seventy-five pounds and no longer needed medications. He began sharing his dietary opinions on his Internet blog and interacting with his readers. When asked he would give his opinion, but the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition got wind of his treachery and following a three-month investigation ordered him stop as he was “counseling” and needed a license to do so. The Institute for Justice defended Cooksey’s First Amendment right of free speech citing the fact that Cooksey’s speech “…involves no sensitive relationships (as in psychological counseling, no uniquely vulnerable listeners (as in potential legal clients forced to make snap decisions), and no plausible presumption that the listeners are unable to exercise independent judgment.” Cooksey’s advice was unpaid, freely sought, involved no professional-client relationships. [Will]

Regulatory oversight is a necessary and proper function of government. However, under the expansive interpretation of the Constitution’s general welfare clause beginning 1936, much of regulatory oversight has become an autocratic function of a nanny-state bureaucracy intruding into the lives of a free people capable of making rational decisions without government interference.

Limiting when and where free speech may occur

Free speech is under attack on many of the nation’s colleges and universities. Robert Van Tuinen, a student at Modesto Junior College, was stopped by campus police from distributing copies of the Constitution on the 226th anniversary of its signing. College officials told Van Tuinen that he could get permission to distribute the Constitution if he pre-registered for time in the “free speech zone” which reportedly was small slab of concrete just big enough for two people. However, once registered, Van Tuinen would have to wait for an available opening. Effectively, administration officials used campus police to enforce an unconstitutional rule, declared the campus to be off limits for free speech except for a small “free speech” area, and limited when and how many could use so-called free speech area, all in violation of the First Amendment. [Haynes]

Criminalizing free speech

Want to go to jail for your views—spoken or written? Lawrence Torcello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, suggests that some scientists and their financial backers may be both morally and criminally negligent if their views contradict a set of facts that the majority of scientists agree upon. As an example, Torcello believes that, “We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.” [Torcello]

Torcello brushes aside free speech concerns by distinguishing between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs and the funding of a strategically organized campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions. Torcello states that, “Protecting the latter as a form of free speech stretches the definition of free speech to a degree that undermines the very concept.” But Torcello should read the First Amendment again. There is no limit on free speech because it is strategically organized and well-financed. [Torcello] The Left questions the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions without help from the liberal intellectual elites. The problem for the Left is that the public is getting wise to the liberal, radical environmentalist agenda and other pseudo-scientific pronouncements, and the Left’s only recourse is silence their critics.

Writing seventy years ago in his seminal Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek identified the liberal necessity of group-think for the masses to achieve their ends.

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends…Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. [emphasis added][Hayek, p. 171.]

For liberals, any public criticism or even expressions of doubt tend to weaken public support for the official doctrine, creed, values, or views of the regime. The acts of government must be sacrosanct and exempt from criticism. Even though the great majority may have surrendered independent thought, the minority’s doubt, discontent, and criticisms must be suppressed or silenced. [Hayek, pp. 175-176.]

The suppression of free speech in America ranks high on the liberal agenda because the end of liberalism is socialism, and the end of socialism is totalitarianism. That is why those pesky three little words of “freedom of speech” in the First Amendment are so troubling to the liberal establishment.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, “The Ministry of Truth 2014,” culturewarrior.net, March 7, 2014. http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/on-college-campuses-zoning-out-free-speech (accessed 3-19-14)

Charles C. Haynes, “On college campuses, zoning out free speech,” First Amendment Center, October 14, 2013. www.firstamendmentcenter.org/on-college-campuses-zoning-out-free-speech#tab-section (accessed 3-19-14).

Lawrence Torcello, “Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?” The Conversation, March 13, 2014. https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111##comment_333276 (accessed March 19, 2014).

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), pp. 171, 175-176.

George Will, “An attack on free speech in North Carolina,” Tulsa World, September 27, 2012, A-16.

Newspeak 2014: The Language of Socialism

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 14, 2014
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Category: Archives, Government, Humanism, Socialism, Truth

Truth is the foundation of all morals, and the meaning of truth is obscured in direct proportion to the elasticity allowed in defining the meaning of words within a language. For 1,500 years the source of truth for much of Western civilization has been the Bible. The meaning of words such as truth, freedom, good and evil were relatively inelastic within the Christian worldview. Their meanings were based on absolutes called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.

Socialism requires an elastic language. For humanists, truth is defined in terms of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all the truth. Therefore, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.]

Words are the means by which order is achieved in society. The dominant worldview of the members of a society determines the elasticity allowed in defining the meaning of words within the language and ultimately the meaning of truth and the freedom of the individual. The principal worldviews contending for dominance in Western civilization are Christianity and humanism. Christianity leads to truth and freedom. Humanism leads to relativism and socialism whose ultimate end is totalitarianism. Three modern prophets from the mid-twentieth century foresaw the effects of an elastic language with regard to the meaning of words.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 paints a graphic and unsettling picture of life under a vast, insidious socialistic regime called Ingsoc (acronym for English Socialism) that covers a large part of the globe. (See previous article: The New Ministry of Truth 2014.”) Control of the population is guided by Ingsoc’s Inner Party and its leader, Big Brother, and the Ministry of Truth. The ministry of Truth controls the news media, entertainment, the arts, and publishing and is responsible for propaganda and revision of the historical record to conform them to the government-approved version of events.

The regime invented Newspeak in which speech and writing use words in a way that changes their meaning, especially to persuade people to think a certain way or diminish the range of thought. [Merriam-Webster]

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words…This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give an example, the word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds. It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or intellectually free” since political freedom and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts… [Orwell, pp. 299-300.]

Once immersed in Newspeak, it becomes relatively easy to doublethink which is the acceptance of two contradictory ideas or beliefs at the same time.

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992)

In his Road to Serfdom, Hayek has much to say about the language of socialism which he considers synonymous with totalitarianism. Whether it is the socialism of extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state or socialism through the nationalization of the means of production and central planning, Hayek rightly believed that the outcome is essentially the same for both systems—totalitarianism. [Hayek, pp. 54-55.] And it is socialism’s perversion of the language (words and their meaning) that is of particular concern. Once the sources of all information are under the control of a totalitarian regime, it has the power to mold the minds of the people. The minds of the people will then be indoctrinated with the precepts of the regime and no others will be tolerated. The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda are destructive to the one of the essential foundation of all morals, that is, “…the sense of and respect for truth.” [Hayek, pp. 171-172.]

Hayek described the means whereby language is perverted by socialism’s propaganda.

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before…And the most efficient technique to the end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a world used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. [Hayek, p. 174.]

The quest for equality in socialistic society becomes an officially enforced inequality. Enforced inequality is labeled the new freedom or “collective freedom” which is not the freedom of the individual “…but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.” [Hayek, pp. 174-175.]

Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963)

Weaver wrote of the power of the word in Ideas Have Consequences. Weaver accepted the ancient belief that there was “…a divine element present in language. The feeling that to have power of language is to have control over things is deeply imbedded in the human mind.” Weaver believed that the heightened interest in semantics is the most notable development of our time with regard to the study of language. Semanticists question how the fixities of language can account for a changing reality through time. They desire that words not represent truth but a range of perceptions and reflect the circumstances of the user. [Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, pp. 150-151.]

In our world of progressive education, scientism, and mass media, the semanticists have captured the linguistic high ground through redefinition of key concepts. Regarding the consequences thereof, Weaver cut to the heart of the matter in a 1952 essay.

Just as soon as men begin to point out that the word is one entity and the object it represents is another, there set in a temptation to do one thing with the word and another different thing with the object it is supposed to represent; and here begins that relativism which by now is visibly affecting those institutions which depend for their very existence upon our ability to use language as a permanent binder. [Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, pp. 195-196.]

The prophecies of Orwell, Hayek, and Weaver were published between 1944 and 1950. The fulfillment of their prophecies with regard to the perversion of the meaning of words is abundantly evident in twenty-first century America. The ascending humanistic worldview requires that society be organized upon socialistic principles. During the last half of the twentieth century, the redefinition of the meanings of certain words has become the feedstock of socialism’s propaganda machine: multiculturalism, diversity, freedom, tolerance, good, evil, right, wrong, justice, freedom, and equality to name just a few. The new meanings are being used to mold the thinking of society in support of a humanistic worldview and its socialistic agenda.

The enemy of truth and morality is relativism. Relativism is the child of the false and destructive worldview of humanism that is tied to time and therefore temporal. Humanism and other false religions may ascend and dominate for a time, but the seeds of destruction lie in their own falseness. Truth is eternal and therefore a permanent binder that transcends time. Truth rests in the unadulterated word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” [John 1:1, 14a, 17. RSV] In response to Pontius Pilate’s question regarding Jesus’ kingship, Jesus answered, “You say that I am a King. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” [John 18:37. RSV]

Truth is reality, and it is the nature of man to seek and know truth. To know God is to know truth.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 392-393.

George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Signet Classics, 1949, 1950), pp. 299-300.

Merriam-Webster, “newspeak,” w-m.com. http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/ newspeak (accessed March 3, 2014).

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – Text and Documents, Ed. Bruce Caldwell, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), pp. 54-55, 171-172, 174-175.

Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948, 1984), pp. 150-151.

Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, Eds. George M. Curtis, III and James J. Thompson, Jr., (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 195-196.

The New Ministry of Truth 2014

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 7, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Government, Socialism, Truth

In 1949, George Orwell wrote 1984, a grim novel about an omnipresent government set in Airstrip One, formerly Great Britain but now merely a province of Oceania, a superstate ruled by a political system called English Socialism. Oceania’s leaders are the Inner Party, a privileged elite headed by Big Brother, the pseudo-divine party leader who uses mass media, propaganda, and a cult-like following to create his idealized, heroic, and god-like public image. Oceania is a land of constant war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control. However, the oppressive nature of the regime is justified by Big Brother and the Party in the name of the supposed greater good.

Control of the public’s mind is achieved with the assistance of the Ministry of Truth which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism and controls the news media, entertainment, the arts, and publishing. The Ministry falsifies the historical record where necessary to conform it to the government-approved version of events. To assist in its propaganda and revisionist efforts, the government invented Newspeak, a language used to limit freedom of thought and other expressions of individualism and independent thinking which are considered thought crimes.

In 2014,it appears that America’s current version of Big Brother is attempting to develop his own Ministry of Truth. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hired Social Solutions International, Inc. in 2012 to develop a study and data gathering procedures which were scheduled for testing this spring in South Carolina. The study is designed to:

Identify and understand the critical information needs (CINs) of the American public (with special emphasis on vulnerable/disadvantaged populations).

To provide a comprehensive analysis of access/barriers to CINs in diverse American communities.

To determine what barriers to entry exist in FCC regulated market and to what extent these barriers have a negative impact. [Social Solutions International, Inc., pp. 2-3.]

To put FCC’s Newspeak into layman’s language, the purpose of the FCC study is to uncover information from the daily operations of television and radio broadcasters, newspapers, and the Internet that will reveal the process used to select news stories for presentation, frequency of coverage of critical information needs, media bias, and media responsiveness to underserved populations as perceived by FCC. [Perkins]

The FCC has already identified certain information that it considers as critical information needs of all Americans: health and welfare, education, transportation, economic opportunities, environment, civic information, political information, and emergencies. [Social Solutions International, Inc., p. 61.] Effectively, the FCC will control news content through imposition of content standards consistent with its own definition of CINs. Deviation from the FCC’s CIN standards will be judged as broadcaster/print media bias and therefore subject to FCC regulatory oversight, censure, punishment, and correction.

Although the study has been labeled as voluntary, the Multi-Market Study is merely the door-opener for federal control of the content of broadcast and print news media. Broadcasters must obtain periodic license renewals, and once FCC-defined CIN standards are established, what is to prevent the FCC’s power over broadcaster license renewals from being the hammer used to force broadcasters to accept FCC CIN content requirements? This is somewhat akin to a state or a local school district’s “voluntary” acceptance of Common Core standards. If Common Core standards that are acceptable to the U.S. Department of Education are not chosen, funds will not be forthcoming. [Johnson] Also, the FCC does not have regulatory authority over print media and the Internet at present. However, if FCC-defined bias is found by the study to exist in print media, such perceived bias will be justification for the federal government to expand the FCC’s regulatory reach into newspapers, magazines, other print media, and the Internet.

For those that haven’t been paying attention, this is the liberal formula for controlling American society: create a victim, elevate victim status to being deprived of an imaginary “right” and thus tantamount to discrimination, and finally impose a government solution to fix the discrimination. The perception by the FCC (a perception perhaps encouraged by the FCC’s superiors) is that some Americans are being victimized, particularly the vulnerable and disadvantaged, by not getting the critical information they need from a “biased” media. All Americans have a “right” to critical information to which some are being deprived and therefore are discriminated against. The government’s solution is to eliminate the perceived discrimination found by the FCC study by (1) requiring existing media to disseminate whatever the government determines to be critical information and (2) providing government licensing, support, special privileges, and sources of financing for new media outlets that will supply the critical information needs of the diverse but marginalized-vulnerable-disadvantaged communities presently unserved or under-served by the existing biased media.

Since the FCC’s proposed insertion of monitors into newsrooms caught the attention of many Americans, there has been a firestorm of controversy surrounding the intrusion of big government into the newsrooms of America. Because of the massive negative publicity, the study has been shelved although not rejected at the present time.

Opposition to the FCC study has come from both within and without the media. Opponents have voiced a loud and long defense of First Amendment protections of a free press. But where are the First Amendment champions when religious freedom also guaranteed by the First Amendment is repeatedly trashed by the Obama administration? This administration has made it clear that wherever conflicts occur between religious freedom and its definition of equality, equality will be the victor every time. One need only look at the Affordable Care Act and the advancement of the homosexual agenda as just two of many examples of the trouncing of religious freedom in America.

The FCC’s efforts to control the message through dictating CINs mimics the tactics of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s fictional account of a totalitarian socialist state. However, the FCC has also become the real-life moral and de facto equivalent of Communist political commissars of the twentieth century who were assigned to military units to teach party principles and policies and to insure party loyalty. Non-military commissars were also used to attempt to control public opinion or expression. [Webster]

The FCC’s latest attempt to inject themselves into the newsroom and thereby control the message is just one example of the over-reach of American government into the minutiae of the lives of all Americans. We see the same government intrusions into doctors’ offices and hospitals, school rooms, businesses, local government, property rights and right of contract, religious organizations, and families to name just a few. Government intrusion ranges from serious violation of the Constitution through behavior and speech codes to ridiculous regulations on sugary drink sizes and light bulbs.

Massive government intrusion into the lives of its citizens began in the 1930s under new interpretations of the general welfare clause of the Constitution. Government expansion began in Roosevelt’s New Deal Years of the 1930s and accelerated with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s. However, the exponential growth during the last five years into the minutest detail of the daily lives of American citizens has become suffocating. Alexis De Tocqueville, in his 1835 Democracy in America, had a prophet’s foresight into America’s 2014 slide into a totalitarian Oceania.

We forget that it is, above all, in the details that we run the risk of enslaving men…Subjection in the minor things of life is obvious every day and is experienced indiscriminately by all citizens. It does not cause them to lose hope but it constantly irks them until they give up the exercise of their will. It gradually blots out their mind and enfeebles their spirit …

The democratic nations which introduced freedom into politics at the same time that they were increasing despotism in the administrative sphere have been led into the strangest paradoxes. Faced with the need to manage small affairs where common sense can be enough, they reckon citizens are incompetent. When it comes to governing the whole state, they give these citizens immense prerogatives. They turn them by degrees into playthings of the ruler or his masters… [emphasis added] [Tocqueville]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Signet Classics, 1950).

Social Solutions International, Inc., “Research Design for the Study of Multi-Market Critical Information Needs,” Federal Communications Commission, (Silver Springs, Maryland: Social Solutions International, Inc., April 2013). http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/research-design-multi-market-study-critical-information-needs (accessed February 22, 2014)

Tony Perkins, “American Pai: FCC Chair Fights off Government Snoops,” Family Research Council, February 21, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/american-pai-fcc-chair-fights-off-govt-snoops (accessed February 22, 2014);
Ajit Pai, “The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom,” The Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366903828260732 (accessed February 22, 2014)

Larry G. Johnson, “Common Core Curriculum Standards: The devil is in the details,” culturewarrior.net, November 8, 2013. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2013/11/08/common-core-curriculum-standards-the-devil-is-in-the-details/ (accessed February 26, 2014).

“Commissar,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), p. 166.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 807-808.