Forget the facts, though, and let’s stick to the point: SOMETHING MUST BE DONE to restore fairness and balance to the mediasphere, and that something is already being talked about regularly on Capitol Hill: restore the fairness doctrine.

Which would essentially kill talk radio as we know it today. Radio stations would essentially be harassed and regulated out of that market, simply because the cost to produce and defend the product would exceed the economic benefit of providing it.

Trent Lott (who opposed eliminating it in the first place) has already been quoted in the New York Times as saying “’Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.’ At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in ‘younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill.’”

Senator Diane Feinstein admitted on Fox News Sunday that Democrats in the Senate were “looking” at reviving the Fairness Doctrine “because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.”

This is an audacious power grab. And not one just being made by a Left which has been losing its ideological war with the Right, but by many in the current political and media elite, whatever their nominal political affiliation.

These politicians are at a loss to stem the tide of history that has taken more and more power away from them and placed it into the hands of average citizens like you and me. That is what is so intriguing to so many of them about the “third way” that Asian capitalist societies appear to represent: a stable political and cultural elite with a seemingly prosperous and compliant working class. Nirvana!

Of course, there is no such thing. The creative destruction that is at the heart of free market economies will never allow such a social arrangement to last for long. China will be faced with decades of social and political upheaval; the Asian tigers are becoming freer, in fits and starts, and the march toward freedom will continue to prevail as long as we can preserve the one essential freedom that is increasingly at risk, with few defenders: the right to free speech and the free flow of information.

Unfortunately, this is a battle we are not currently winning. The internet is censored in much of the world, often with the complicity of our own major corporations. Campaign finance “reforms” have attacked the very foundation of our political system, and now talk of regulating speech on the internet and talk radio is inching toward action.

This is a battle we cannot lose. Each stupid regulation, idiotic social program, ridiculous subsidy, or overtaxed dollar is a frustration to be fought when we can, borne when we must. But the attack on speech is another fight altogether.

If we lose this one, it’s for all the marbles. America could wind up looking a lot more like China, at least politically, than the other way around.