Again the Progressives are attacking America’s freedoms:
An amendment proposed to the Financial Services Appropriation Bill that would have protected free speech by preventing the Federal Communications Commission from restoring the so-called Fairness Doctrine regulations to U.S. airwaves has been rejected by members of a U.S. House committee.
"Unfortunately, Democrats on the Rules Committee decided that the freedom of speech, though enshrined in the Constitution, is not a right they were willing to afford their colleagues in the House," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who along with Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., sponsored the plan.
"I am profoundly disappointed," Pence said.
The Rules Committee voted 8-4 along party lines to reject the amendment that would have halted any proposals by the FCC that would restore the Fairness Doctrine, which was abandoned in 1987 under President Reagan.
Pence explained in a website statement that the First Amendment "is not a partisan issue; the preservation of constitutional freedoms should be the paramount duty of every elected representative and should take precedence over partisan gamesmanship or heavy-handedness."
Pence must not know about this:
More than anyone, Woodrow Wilson advanced the new Progressive theory of human nature and human institutions and the corresponding Progressive critique of the principles of the American Founding and the Founders' Constitution. Wilson, who was president of Princeton and of the American Political Science Association before becoming President of the United States, was the first Chief Executive to openly criticize the Constitution, once comparing it to "political witchcraft." So hostile was he to the self evident truths of the Founding that in a 1911 address he remarked, "if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface."
Wilson above all others deserves credit for the notion that the Constitution is a "living" or "evolving" document. As he wrote in 1908, "Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin." Insisting that the Constitution does not contain any theories or principles, Wilson argued that the Constitution has a "natural evolution" and is "one thing in one age, another in another." "Living political constitutions," he wrote, "must be Darwinian in structure and in practice."
In the course of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, Wilson's interpretation of the Constitution has served the cause of big government, eventually dropping the self-description of "progressive" for the more marketable label "liberal." But whether they call themselves progressive or liberal, whether they are Democrat or Republican, the advocates of big government are unified in their belief that the principles of the Founding are irrelevant and the meaning of the Constitution can be easily stretched to justify any exercise of government power.
And note the "whether they are democrat or Republican".
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