Blogs: What are They Good for?

While I was out of town seeing to the health of the elderly relative, the deadline for submitting commentary to the FEC regarding its upcoming implementation of BCRA rules to the Net was drawing near. In fact, it's tomorrow, and if you're a blogger and haven't yet signed the Online Coalition's petition, I urge you to do so.

As you'd expect, Mike Krempasky is posting daily on this. Here's an ongoing listing of responses to the FEC; don't miss Mike's compilation (with commentary) of responses to Sean Treglia, whose work at Pew helped propel BCRA into law. Wizbang has commentary from Reid Cox, and this morning's Washington Times ran a good editorial calling on the FEC to allow the Net to remain an arena of free speech, and offering examples of the regulatory nightmare bloggers might have to negotiate if BCRA is applied to the Net.

All this makes one think about the purpose of blogs, in particular, and free speech in general. In simply posing the question, "what are blogs good for," the absurdity and (to use a banned term)un-American activity of banning any political speech is driven home. Who is to weigh the worth of such speech? Apparently, the federal government, unless the two bills now before Congress exempting the Net from BCRA are passed.

Three months ago tomorrow, I warned that such regulation could result in blogs becoming Samizdat publications. I didn't mean that hyperbolically then, and I don't think subsequent events have weakened my argument. In fact, given the degree of hostility toward blogs that the various scandals of the MSM has engendered, I'd say we're in for a rougher time than some might imagine. That doesn't mean I expect blogs to be driven underground; I have hope in the above-mentioned legislation, and in the good sense of some FEC commissioners, most notably Bradley Smith. After all, it was Smith's interview with CNET that alerted all of us to McCain-Feingold's potential to force a crackdown on blogging.

Disapproval of blogging isn't news per se, and it's perfectly fine, I'd propose, to most bloggers, whatever their politics. All we want is to be left alone to exercise our First Amendment rights. I do think, however, that the most central reason some old-line commentators oppose blogs is that, by invading their monopoly, we not only have the potential to catch them in scandals, but we violate that cardinal rule of the political class: we fail to exercise an appropriate degree of comity, if that word is understood in this use as the calm that descends when objectionable voices are drowned out in a sea of elite consensus.

A fine example of this faith in action is found in this article by Godfrey Hodgson, the British author and journalist who wrote the authorized biography of Pat Moynihan. (I think the late Senator, who [as WFB said] always said the right thing and voted the wrong way, didn't get the memo.) I don't know whether or not Hodgson wrote the tease of his piece: "The Senate's Filibuster Deal: Only a Truce in the Culture Wars. As long as conservative blogs poison the political atmosphere, American politics will be long and hard, says Godfrey Hodgson."

After praising the compromise by the Gang of Fourteen, and condemning Bush for what Hodgson sees as an effort to turn America into a far right hell-hole, he concludes with these lines:

As long as the conservative blogs throb with contempt for judges who do not join the crusade of God’s people, any Republican president would need to get conservative judges on to the bench. As long as the Bush administration persists in acting at home and abroad as though November’s election was a mandate for going all out for unconditional surrender in the culture wars, truces like Monday night’s are likely to be strictly temporary.

The lament of the modern liberal: The world would be so simple (and orderly) if only everyone was as enlightened and generous as I am! But if you can't beat'em, you can at least try to shut them down.