Think it’s those mean-spirited old Republicans and Christian conservatives that want to impose their own version of free speech on the American populace? Think again. Here is an article by the AP’s David Bauber (Hat tip: Drudge) that ought to send shivers through any prospective 2008 presidential election voter, no matter what side of the political aisle you sit on:

Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network.
MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America’s Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.

At least 5,000 people nationwide have signed up to compile logs on who is running commercials on Fox, Gilliam said. The groups want to first concentrate on businesses running local ads, as opposed to national commercials.

If this article wasn’t so chilling by its very nature, one could look at it and simply shake their heads in wonder. After all, outside of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, virtually every major daily newspaper (NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, etc. etc. etc.), every major television news network (NBC, CBS, ABC), every other major cable TV network (CNN, MSNBC, CNBC), and every major wire service (AP, Reuters, UPI) are not just Democratic-leaning and liberal in their political philosophies, but unabashedly so. I should also toss NPR and Time and Newsweek in there as well. And what do conservatives have? FOX News Network (a channel I would hardly describe as overly conservative, but then again, if you deviate one iota from the Democratic-leaning mouthpieces of all the organizations and institutions I just listed, you’re automatically tagged as “right wing”) and, by and large, syndicated talk radio. And that’s it.

(Note: It would be easy to dismiss the Moveon.org effort as a bunch of kooks, but remember that it is the Democrats in Congress who have recently raised the idea of bringing back the Fairness Doctrine – all because they know that conservative talk radio is the only remaining media they don’t own just yet. They weren’t able to succeed in the talk radio market with their pathetic and juvenile Air America initiative, so now they want the government to force that kind of crappy lunatic programming on independent broadcast stations.)

So what to make of Moveon.org’s effort? In short, they’re afraid – afraid that 1) people are waking up to the fact that the only thing right the government has ever done is the U.S. Postal Service and that it is a cesspool of waste and fraud, 2) that our elected officials – from both parties – have never been more clueless or reckless with the taxpayers’ money, or 3) that the Democratic Party is philosophically bankrupt, still treading out the same old tired ideas left over from FDR’s “New Deal” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. In the end, what liberals fear most is the marketplace of ideas and individual thought. Don’t believe me? Why, then, are liberals and progressives so in bed with the trade unions, the public school system, and organizations like the United Nations? It’s because they’re afraid that in a free marketplace – practically and philosophically – people know the public schools suck and would gladly take their children elsewhere if given the opportunity to do so, that the only thing labor unions care about is fleecing the pockets of their members and preserving their own protected (and declining) state of affairs, and that the United Nations is nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing, corrupt hacks supporting tin-pot dictators from the crappiest places on this earth.

(This is not to say that Republicans or conservatives don’t have their own personal and/or perfect agendas – they do. But conservatives and Republicans by nature [there will always be exceptions to the rule and wackos in every political stripe] have, by and large, never been afraid of sharing their ideas as part of a bigger marketplace, whether it’s the free-market economy or the marketplace of ideas.)

The fact that left-wing organizations like Moveon.org are seeking to stifle that marketplace at the same time their influence in Democratic Party politics has never been greater should be enough to give everyone pause; if they’re doing this kind of thing now, what would happen if they take control of the White House along with the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives?

Just something to think about.

P.S. It’s not just me who sees the absurd irony in this; Pejman Yousefzadeh does as well.