Democrats: The party of censors, nationally and in Kentucky

Republicans and conservatives get a bad rap for being censors.

It's true that many conservatives would like to limit the availability of pornography that degrades women and animalizes sex, but doing something to benefit society at large by crusading against something that has no valid artistic or editorial content and is designed to appeal only to prurient interests, and does nothing to advance the discussion of ideas, is not necessarily a bad thing.

During the presidential campaign, Democrats tried to make an issue of censorship by falsely accusing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of trying to ban books in her local library when she was mayor of Wasilla. When the news came out that some of the books she was accused of allegedly trying to ban hadn't even been published when she was mayor, that tactic died.

But for all their allegations against conservatives and Republicans, the truth is that Democrats and liberals are the true censors when it comes to political speech and the free and open exchange of ideas.

On the national level, Democrats are talking about trying to censor some of their harshest critics by re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine, which governs broadcast content. Most of the print media in this country are in the tank for liberals and have little bad to say against the current congressional leadership or the incoming president, but radio leans much more to the right. The Democrats would love to effectively censor folks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity by requiring stations to air an equal amount of liberal programming. Trouble is, liberal radio draws few listeners and even fewer sponsors. It's a money-losing proposition. Rather than run unprofitable programming under a government mandate, radio stations would instead opt to drop the highly profitable conservative talk shows in favor of another profitable format.

We're seeing this same kind of censorship, if you want to call it that, in Kentucky. A couple of this state's high-profile liberal blogs are restricting posts.

We first noticed it on "Barefoot and Progressive," run by "Media Czech" (who in reality is Joe Sonka, someone we consider to be an absolute idiot and foul-mouthed buffoon). A number of comments have been deleted in the past few days for no ascertainable reason.

And then, a reader and frequent source e-mailed us to tell us that he'd been put on "moderated" status and his posts were being rejected by Jacob Payne of Page One Kentucky, simply because the reader dared to disagree with Payne's notion that the only reason Kentucky went for John McCain over B. Hussein Obama was because Kentuckians are racists. The reader, who posts anonymously as "Republican gadfly" on Page One but whose identity is known to us, was threatened with outing for challenging Payne.

So much for the idea that liberals and Democrats are champions of free speech and the open and unfettered discussion of principles and ideas, and that conservatives are censors. (Yes, we know that the term "censorship" refers to government suppression of speech, and that moderation on a blog and censorship are not the same things, but in this case the intent is the same in both instances). Most of the conservative blogs in Kentucky do allow a free and open discussion (the only thing we delete is profanity or patently untrue statements) and we find it funny that the liberals, who falsely accused the GOP vice presidential candidate of trying to ban books in her local library, are actively silencing opposing voices.

So, Joe Sonka and Jacob Payne, we're calling you out. Are you going to allow a discussion of the issues of the day on your blogs, or are they only going to be one-sided propaganda pages? If the latter, then we never want to hear another peep out of either of you next time conservatives complain about too much sex and violence on TV.