True fairness

If you have access to the Wall Street Journal, be sure to read this Daniel Henninger article, which uses Brian C. Anderson's new book, South Park Conservatives, as the starting point for an article about how the almost 40 year life span of the fairness doctrine created the "rocket fuel" that powers the current conservative boom in radio, Fox TV, and the blogosphere. With radio such as the quotation below, how can it be anything but a good article:

What goes around comes around, I suppose. Conservatives would say they're now using radio, TV and the Web -- all of it free from political control -- to give as good as they got from the 1960s onward. For years, they claim, liberal managers in broadcasting, journalism, publishing and academia marginalized them. Were conservatives imagining that? Maybe not. Mr. Anderson cites left-wing philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who taught at Columbia, Harvard and Brandeis) urging liberals back then to practice active "intolerance against movements from the Right" in the name of "liberating tolerance." Thus, for example, liberal academics would vote to deny tenure for conservative colleagues -- and still do -- believing that this is a morally mandated act. Liberals now marvel at the energy and output of the conservative "movement" -- the talk shows, the think tanks, the blogosphere. No need to wonder; they compressed the rocket fuel for the inevitable explosion. But a price has been paid. What got lost during the years of liberal exclusionism, according to Peter Berkowitz of George Mason University, was "guidance for the negotiation of disagreement in a democracy." No more perfect example of the price the political system has paid for years of conservative shunning exists than the Senate's standoff over judges. You can find the reasons Democrats are shunning the Bush nominees to the appellate bench by consulting the Web site of People for the American Way -- abortion, corporate law, minimum wage, Social Security, environment. They disagree with these nominees on -- everything.