Why do leftists always attack free speech while calling for "fairness and diversity"?

Why is the left always afraid of free thinking people? Remember Leftist President Hugo Chavez has attempted to silence all opposition in Venezuela immediately upon gaining power. (The only progressive exceptions I can think of - who were not afraid of countering views - were Stalin, Mao, Mugabe and Castro.) Will Obama stifle dissent?

The Fairness Doctrine is supported by prominent Democrats such as:

• Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat
• Senator John Kerry. Democrat
• Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat
• Representative Maurice Hinchey, Democrat
• Representative Louise Slaughter, Democrat
• Representative John Dingell, Democrat
• Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat

But Obama and the Democrats also plan other, more subtle regulations that would achieve much the same outcome: Obama also wants to relicense stations every two years (not eight, as is the case now), so these monitors would be a constant worry for stations. Finally, the Democrats also want more minority-owned stations and plan to intervene in the radio marketplace to ensure that outcome. It's worth noting that Trinity Church, the controversial church Obama attended for many years, is heavily involved in the media-reform movement, having sought to restore the Fairness Doctrine, prevent media consolidation and deny licenses to stations that refuse to carry enough children's programming.

Opposed by libertarians ands conservatives like American Thinker and Heritage Foundation: <link>: <link>

Supported by the progressive community, like Common Dreams and The Center for American Progress: <link>: <link>: "we call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local diversity of programming, news, and commentary."

There is a difference between FREE thinking individuals and FALSE Propogandists.

Frankly if Heritage and American Thinker oppose it, its probably an idea that returns power to the hands of average persons. Remember it is AVERAGE PERSONS that own the airwaves and lease them to propogandists like Fox.

Its interesting that you consider it an imposition on "free thinking people" to be exposed to ALL views on an issue in a doctrine of fair access to airwaves owned by the people. That instead you want to give control of what "free thinking" messages are broadcast to the wealthy elites.

That's hardly 'free thinking' of you/

Its the extreme right that is terrified of criminals, except of course, those who donate to the RepubliCON party. They pardon those.

The rest of society is appalled. that includes all real conservatives and moderates. Honest people who abandoned the RepubliCONs a long time ago. Hardly the left.

Here's to hoping a short dose of eating cat food will moderate the views of a portion of the imbecile, right wing, fundamentalist racists.

The future of the US depends on this!

Locking up the corrupt fundamentalist leadership and feeding them cat food might set a good example. Perhaps they will then leave for Guyana. Got to be near their hero, Bush, who will be hiding out in Paraguay.

Of course, Jones was in Guyana seeking his communist paradise, and 1,000 people chose to die for Jones and socialism. To Jones and the rest of his commune free speech (news agencies) was the primary enemy.

Jones was a Christian Pastor. He was seeking his CHRISTIAN paradise.

Jim Jones was seeking to create a “socialist paradise” at his Peoples Temple in Guyana. Jim Jones of San Francisco, like Ayres in Chicago, were both respected members of their leftwing “communities” and authorities on urban housing.Furthermore, Obama isn't the first to mix Marxist utopianism with cult deification. Jim Jones did it with his Peoples Temple. See “Jonestown and Liberation Theology” by Massimo Introvigne, CESNUR, Torino, Italy (<link>) Jim Jones’ fascination with Marxism is well-known. It has been used as a key interpretive tool in at least one of the important books about Jonestown, John R. Hall’s 1987 Gone from the Promised Land (Hall 1987).

At the end of the journey, we find this young woman recording her last message in Jonestown: “It’s been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle. No other way I would rather go than give my life for socialism, communism, and I thank Dad [Jones] very, very much” (Hall 1987, 286).

Those who followed the Marxist Jones into the jungles of Guyana are comparably ignorant to America’s socialists, liberals and progressives today: If a small time communist can murder nearly a thousand people, and big time Marxists can murder dozens of millions (Stalin, Castro, Mugabe, Chavez and Mao, et al), and peoples and parties who call themselves “socialists’ (the national socialist parties of Germany, Ethiopia, Cambodia and Vietnam, et al) can murder over one hundred million people worldwide, why are leftists so ignorant/vile as to push us towards more socialism?

Proof by insistence is a logical fallacy. Jones believed in, preached and leveraged Christianity. Remeber that in Acts 4 and 5, the idealized form of Christianity is not very far from the Marxist ideal.

Again, the attraction of Jones was theological - Christian. His ability to control was based in a belief in the aferlife (something Marx ridiculed as an opiate). So Jones' ability to coerce mass suicide was based in Christianity, not marxism

But then again, logic has never seemed to be one of your stronger suits. BTW, Stalin, Mugabe, Castro and Mao have more in common with GWB than with any marxist/socialist ideals or how democratic socialism has actually been succesfully implemented in the EU and elsewhere.

It is the ignorance of failing to recognize the above list as simply totalitarian oligarchs who have nothing to do with socialism that seems to blind folks like you.