Salon: Opinion: Fred Jerome: “Lets Nationalize Fox News, Imagining a Very Different Media”: Imagine a State-Owned National Media in America, What a Nightmare For Democracy

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

Salon: Opinion: Fred Jerome: Let’s Nationalize Fox News, Imagining a Very Different Media

Imagine a country where the state meaning the central government controlled all the news and media. I know in the 21st Century that is very hard to imagine with so much of the world moving in a least in a Democratic direction if not a liberal democratic direction. And even countries in the Middle East and not just Turkey and Israel can people there get access to non-state-owned media and Saudi Arabia is one of them thanks to satellite TV, the internet and smart phones.

So this is really not possible anymore, but let’s say somehow the United States nationalized the media here at least the domestic media. And now you have the Federal Government with the National Security Agency and everything else now in control of even more information. And who get’s to see it and when. Even if you can forget about the fact that this would be unconstitutional because of our first amendment. Meaning this could and would never happen.

All of that power and information inside of the hands of the people with the power in the country getting to decide for the most part what we can read and listen to or watch. And when we could do those things. Now if you are going to imagine these things, you might as well imagine living in jail because the same thing happens there. You can’t have a Democracy especially a liberal democracy something that is covered a lot on this blog, without Freedom of the Press and the ability for people to get the information they need to be able to managed their own lives. It is really this simple, you put the power of media in the hands of government, you get what they want you to hear, when they want you to hear it.

What I just asked you to do, was to imagine a nightmare. Unless you are a fascist and statist who is so power-hungry that you can’t imagine anyone especially not with your government and political faction having any real power of their own affairs. That you see people as stupid, who can’t control things like information and how they get it and can’t manage their own affairs. What Fred Jerome is proposing here, especially to nationalize Fox News simply because it is kicking MSNBC’s butt in ratings, is nothing more than pure leftist statism and fascism. That the Far-Left likes to accuse the Right of all the time.
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PBS: The Tavis Smiley Show- George Carlin: On Freedom of Choice

Source:Tavis Smiley Show– George Carlin, on the Tavis Smiley Show, in 2008.

Source:The New Democrat

“The important big things no Choice. Fewer banks, news media, oil companies etc. For consumers though more choices as to what to buy.”

From the Tavis Smiley Show

George Carlin is arguing that Americans don’t have freedom of choice as far as things that matter. Yet we as Americans make both personal and economic choices everyday. And so did George Carlin when he was alive and I wish he was alive today. But he made real consequential choices about his life everyday. Like what he would talk about in his monologues, or should he go on the Tavis Smiley Show to use as examples.

Americans make real consequential choices everyday about what we eat, what do we wear, when do we wake up, what to do in our free time, who we want to befriend and get involved with romantically. And as we are becoming more liberal and libertarian as a society, we are getting more power to decide what we should do with our money. Like should we gamble or not purchase and use marijuana or not. Gays are being able to decide should they get married or not.

Perhaps what George Carlin and excuse me for trying to get into his great head and great brain, but maybe he was saying what Americans really have now are fewer choices with what we can do with our own money. Since we now have such large multi-national corporations. That we have less competition now with so much financial power in the hands of a very few. And we have less choice economic choice from that perspective than we use to. And that would be a very fair point.

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