The Bulwark, an anti-conservative site funded by leftist billionaire Pierre Omidyar, has come up with a new terrible argument in defense of internet censorship.

Jim Swift at The Bulwark accuses Senator Hawley of trying to implement a “new” Fairness Doctrine.

 There was a tremendous growth in conservative talk radio after the doctrine was repealed in 1987, and reinstating the fairness doctrine was seen as a threat to that. Whether that threat was real or overstated is a debate for another day, red meat conservative voters were sold the notion that leftists wanted to take away Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Mike Pence, then a member of the House, even sponsored legislation to put a stop to any reintroduction. Back then, the refrain was “if you don’t like it, don’t listen” or, as the Heritage Foundation’s Rebecca Hagelin put it to would-be champions of a new fairness doctrine: “What are you afraid of?”..

Now, we have social media galore: Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, to name a few. There is no shortage of opinion–conservative or liberal; good, bad, or ugly that you can’t get, for free, in seconds. And social media is where some conservatives think we need a new “fairness doctrine” of sorts.

Swift’s analogy is completely backward.

The trouble with the Fairness Doctrine was that it was censorship under the guise of fairness. Today, Facebook, Google, and other Dot Com monopolies are again censoring under the guise of fairness.

“If you don’t like it, don’t listen” is the whole point.

People should be able to express their views within what has become a marketplace of ideas without fearing retribution. If you don’t like their views, don’t listen to them.

Conservatives are not proposing to censor anyone, as the Fairness Doctrine did, only to prevent censorship.

It’s leftists and their allies, like The Bulwark, that champion politically correct censorship.