"Do you personally support revival of the Fairness Doctrine?" Pelosi was asked. "Yes," she replied spontaneously.

Now, there is no ambiguity about this issue. The Fairness Doctrine would require every show to be balanced in its political opinion, thus ending the viability of any business plans for a successful -- either liberal or conservative -- radio host. But because almost all successful talk radio shows are conservative, liberal Democrats are trying to kill it. They have been explicit. They say they want to take Rush Limbaugh's voice off the radio, as well as the voices of other leading conservatives.

For sheer shabbiness and moral squalor, it is hard to improve on Pelosi's revealing words: "The interest in my caucus is the reverse." She offers not even an obeisance to a principled argument, just the raw political fact that free speech and dissent via talk radio is not in the "interest" of her parliamentary "caucus."

The downward path of liberalism can be charted from the martyr's sacrifice of Martin Luther King to the political bully's grunt of Pelosi. Liberalism, once the champion of man's noblest human instinct for political freedom, is now just a self-admitted machine for power accumulation.

I suppose the rotating of liberalism and conservatism into the power of national office gives each cause the opportunity, in its turn, to relearn the honor of defending dissent in a representative republic such as ours. Now it is the turn of the conservatives. So as the liberals leave the watchtowers of freedom, conservatives are taking up our duty.

Among the new occupants in the watchtower is the Media Research Center, which has formed the Free Speech Alliance to defend dissent by organizing a grass-roots opposition to the re-enactment of the Fairness Doctrine.