Frank’s Case Book

As long ago as 1959, the sainted leader of modern Conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr. observed that Liberals in his time did not recognize Conservative thought as a competing intellectual perspective or philosophy. Rather, if they even thought at all about Conservatism, it was as a pathology that moderns were growing out of or that people needed to be cured of.

It is, therefore, of some amusement that a recent issue of Social Justice published “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize,” by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, psychologists at the University of Virginia. The plucky thesis of their argument is that it may not be the case that all Conservatives are morally evil. Rather, some (probably a minority) may have a “moral intuitions” that are not entirely shared by Liberals. As a Conservative, perhaps I should offer some thanks for this small gracious concession.

It should be noted that this conclusion emerged from psychologists who, I suppose, are qualified to render a clinical conclusion that Conservatism is not necessarily aberrant behavior. Discussion and debate between Conservatives and Liberals should reside the Politics or Philosophy Departments of universities, but first Conservatives, I suppose, need to be professionally certified as eligible to participate in open discussion.

In fairness, some elements of the paper criticize the presumption of some liberals who assume that their positions can be the only moral ones. We are gently informed, for example, that some scholarly research indicates that “some portion of the conservative [1] opposition to affirmative action is truly based on concerns that affirmative action programs sometimes violate the principle of merit.” Gee, I would like to know when providing opportunities to people on the basis of the race or gender does not violate the principle of merit.

Haidt and Graham write as reasonable people. However, articles in scholarly journals are supposed to represent original ideas. The fact that such an article was necessary indicates just how insular and arrogant Liberals and particularly the Liberal intelligentsia in academia have become.

[1] A lower case “conservative” indicates a conservative temperament. The authors should have capitalized“Conservative” since it is a competing political philosophy or ideology. Their punctuation suggests that the authors, despite their openness, are still treating Conservatism as a mental condition rather than a set of consistent ideas..

The year 1949 marked a time when the hubris in the competency government was near its peak, especially after the successful conclusion one of the largest and most successful government enterprises of all, World War II. At that time the Federal Communications Commission issued the Fairness Doctrine, trusting in the government’s ability to arbitrate fairness. The doctrine required broadcasters to provide all sides of a controversial issues in a manner that the FCC considered fair. The fundamental rationale for the doctrine was that the broadcast spectrum is a limited public resource and should be used for the public good. As a practical matter, with the club of the Fairness Doctrine over their heads and their licenses at risk, most broadcasters simply  avoided political controversy. The risks were too great.

In 1969 Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC case, the Supreme Court upheld the Fairness Doctrine based on the limited number of stations, but hinted that if the doctrine were used to suppress speech, the doctrine could be re-evaluated. By 1984, FCC v. League of Women Voters, the Court concluded that the scarcity  argument was loosing its saliency. In this environment, the FCC backed off a the Fairness Doctrine altogether in 1987.

The period since has experienced an explosion in public affairs related broadcasting. For a variety of reasons, Conservatives have been particularly successful on talk radio, while one could easily make the case that broadcast television news is provided from a liberal perspective. Indeed, many political operatives view talk radio as the major source of contemporary Conservative thought.

Any arguments about scarcity have long ago been overwhelmed by modern technology. Not only has there been significant growth in the number of radio stations, but radio information is beamed from satellite increasing available bandwidth. In an age, when one can receive “netcasts” over the cell phone networks on smart phones or assemble one’s own webpage, their is virtually no limit on the space available for political discourse.

The First Amendment is  unequivocal. “Congress shall make no law …  abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” It is very likely that the imposition of the Fairness Doctrine with the current state of technology would loose a constitutional challenge.

What is interesting is  the liberal (they would like to say “progressive”) community’s instinctive reaction to wield political power by suppressing inconvenient free speech. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she personally favors the revival of the Fairness Doctrine.  She has blocked votes that would prohibit the FCC from imposing the Fairness Doctrine. So much for the free speech movement of San Francisco. It is hard to reconcile the First Amendment with the ethos of using the government to ration speech. Such an effort would be rightly rejected in the case of newspapers, where scarcity is a graver than in the broadcast media.

To his credit President Barack Obama, through his press secretary Michael Ortiz, has said the he “does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.” Unfortunately, the reasoning provided is not reassuring. Ortiz explained that the Fairness Doctrine debate it distracts from among other things like support for public broadcasting and increasing minority ownership media outlets. It does not seem that opposition to the Fairness Doctrine arises from principle, but from tactical calculation. For now, perhaps the pressure to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine will ease. It would have been more heartening if Obama said he would actively oppose the re-institution of the Fairness Doctrine. The good news is that time is one the side of free speech. As communications technology improves and becomes even more ubiquitous, the Fairness Doctrine becomes not only less justifiable, but far more difficult to implement.