The anti-liberty forces in America are accelerating their campaign to silence all news sources that do not support the party line of the incoming regime. In a Monday Monday Washington Post op-ed, Max Boot, a prominent Trump critic and CNN global affairs analyst, praised the recent purging of conservative voices from social media and called for American broadcast and cable companies to follow up by shutting down Fox News and other conservative news outlets.
Boot justified his attack on freedom of the press by comparing Fox News to foreign terrorist groups. “There is a whole infrastructure of incitement that will remain intact even after Trump leaves office,” Boot writes. “Just as we do with foreign terrorist groups, so with domestic terrorists: We need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition.”
Instead of being alarmed by the attack on one of the basic liberties of Americans, Boot actually said that censorship by Big Tech should be emulated by other corporations.
Boot said that “Anyone who cherishes our democracy should be grateful to the management of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for their newfound sense of social responsibility … Large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum, which carry Fox News and provide much of its revenue in the form of user fees, need to step in and kick Fox News off.” He added, “And if smaller competitors such as One America News and Newsmax continue to incite viewers, they, too, should be booted off.”
He concluded his essay by claiming that the United Kingdom “doesn’t have its own version of Fox News” due to a government regulator, which strongly suggests that he would support Biden using the federal government’s regulatory powers to shut down the opposition media if the private business sector fails to do the Democrats bidding itself.
Max Boot is just the latest in the sorry string of members of the establishment who have abandoned one of the central tenants on which our Republic was founded. If they will have their way, Americans will lose their sacred right to a free and open press that our Founders saw as a cornerstone to democratic self government.
