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The left seems to feel a powerful, passionate, irrational and all but irresistible urge to use government power to silence conservative voices in the media and to regulate the terms of public debate.

For instance, it’s not enough that the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards in a so-called “victory for free speech,” and laughingly scoffed at their right wing critics.

Now, columnist Edward Morris of the Nashville Tennessean (hometown paper for the Country Music industry) wants to make vindictive use federal power to strike back at “all those who tried to silence their voices and destroy their careers.”

Under the headline, “Radio Was Wrong to Ban the Group,” he includes the startling (but typical) subhead: “Regulations Should Be Imposed” and complains that “country radio stations were wrong to ban the Chicks’ music and regulations should be imposed to ensure that nothing like this happens again. It is eminently reasonable for a station to decline to play a record if it doesn’t ‘test’ well with listeners; but it is outrageous to blacklist a performer’s entire catalog simply because it doesn’t like his or her politics.”

Morris might argue that turnabout is fair play: conservatives tried to use boycotts and powerful station owners to gag and stifle the Chicks, so it’s only fair that liberals try, in return, to shut down the would-be censors.

There’s a big difference, however: the right tried to use the power of the marketplace, but the left wants to use the power of government (“Regulations Should Be Imposed”). Nothing in the First Amendment protects controversial performers from boycotts or protests or radio program directors who disapprove of their political activism. The Constitution does, however, prevent government (“Congress shall make no law…”) from using its unique power to stop citizens from expressing their opinions or uniting with others in economic protest.

Even after the triumph of the Dixie Chicks, commentators like Morris still don’t trust the marketplace and the private choices of consumers to guarantee the free exchange of ideas. He demands “regulations” (initiated by the FCC, no doubt) to “ensure that nothing like this happens again.” Nothing like what, precisely? Leaders within the music business and millions of private citizens expressing their displeasure with an edgy, unnecessary comment and demanding that political posturing could bring business consequences? He apparently believes that the government must guarantee that there will be no commercial price to pay to comments on current issues, no matter how outrageous. Would these regulations also apply to situations like the famous backlash against John Lennon, when he said that “the Beatles are more popular than Christ right now”?

This line of thinking neatly parallels current efforts by Congressional Democrats (led by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Maurice Hinchey of New York) to re-institute the “Fairness Doctrine” relating to the expression of political opinion in the media. Rather than relying on the multi-faceted “free market of ideas,” with at least 100 times more outlets for controversial expressions on all sides of every issue than prevailed when the Fairness Doctrine disappeared in 1987, they seek to empower bureaucrats to insure “balance.” The right way to correct the “conservative lies” that Democrats abhor is to broadcast your own version of the truth, not shut down the other guy – or to force that other guy to give you “equal time.”

That absurd equal time provision (should conservatives also get “equal time” to answer shows like “The West Wing” or “Will and Grace”?) wouldn’t merely end the existence of conservative talk radio and other right wing media, but would close off political discussion altogether. If you’re forced to “balance” an hour of conservative opinion with an hour of liberal opinion, no station could appeal to the public with a clear ideological orientation. Sure, I relish the idea that the FCC would force Air America to balance the obnoxious nonsense of Randi Rhodes with all three hours of the Michael Medved Show. But forcing that sort of “equal time” resembles an effort to force a Country station to balance, say, the Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill with several hours of Tchaikovsky, or to compel an urban Hip Hop station to counter each number by Fifty Cent and Snoop Dog with classic performances by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Further evidence of liberal support for government meddling in media comes with their thoughtless enthusiasm for using taxpayer money to fund PBS and NPR. Once upon a time, you could make the argument that you needed public money to provide history documentaries or children’s programming, but why do we now need to tax people to pay for material that cable networks (not to mention the internet) are providing without subsidy? The idea that federal bureaucrats will decide which programming gets government support carries with it the inescapable whiff of Stalinist “Ministries of Culture” – providing official endorsement of certain forms of entertainment over others. Why does the public need Congress and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to make those choices instead of individual consumers?

The essence of contemporary liberalism involves distrust of ordinary Americans – to feed our own kids, to decide where we choose to send them to school, to plan for retirement, to secure health insurance, to select our own entertainment and information sources.

Nowhere does this distrust, this contempt, for the general public come across more clearly than in the uncontrollable instinct to “impose regulations” and thereby limit alternatives regarding topical controversies in mass media.