CNN can’t stop FOX News, but Dictator Howard Dean can. From Hardball with Chris Mathews:
MATTHEWS: Would you break up Fox?…Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has “The Weekly Standard.” It has got a lot of other interests. It has got “The New York Post.” Would you break it up?
DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but…
What about the right to free speech and association?
MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?
DEAN: I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously […]
Because, you would not get elected, Mr. Dean?
MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You’re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?
DEAN: What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
“Democracy” does not mean freedom, a freedom that Dean is seeking to “regulate”, i.e., extinguish. Democracy means majority rule–where Dean is the “voice” of that majority, and is so empowered to violate the rights of the minority, the minority in this case being the owners of the “big” conglomerates. In principle, there are only two fundamental political viewpoints. That is, two contradictory ends of the “political spectrum.” Those two principles are freedom and slavery. So the issue is not: what number of stations are in a given local, or what portions of the political spectrum have radio stations. The fact is you could have five hundred Dictator Dean approved local radio stations and still be in a worse position then if you had only one radio station. What is essential is that if anyone desires to start a radio station–whether they are a large conglomerate or a local mom and pop operation–that they are not physically prevented by law from doing so. Freedom only requires one thing: freedom from the initiation of physical force–freedom from Howard Dean’s totalitarian fist. It is only the enemies of freedom that require Howard Dean’s particular kind of “rules and regulations.”