Victimization Fails to Enlighten

Near the tail end of a column about a ridiculous boycott of In-N-Out, a California fast-food institution, comes worrisome news:

By placing Bible verses on their packaging, these guys don't "censor" Ayn Rand -- or anyone else. (Image via Wikipedia.)

It's the ultimate irony of the information age that censorship has made a roaring comeback from the bad old days of Woodrow Wilson and Joe McCarthy. A recent Economist-YouGov poll reported a chilling 45 percent of Republicans said the government should be able to shut down media outlets for "inaccuracies or bias," while American colleges and universities, once the citadels of tolerance, have become islands of intolerance. The silencing of differing opinions is an unhappy meal Americans of every political stripe should find hard to swallow. [bold added]

As Michelle Malkin recently reminded us, conservatives been all but shut out of media for a long time. But apparently, many have forgotten both how to work around such obstacles and any suspicion of improper government -- or fear for what might happen should the Democrats find themselves in charge again. In other words, the left has succeeded not only in silencing opposition for a long time, but gotten people way too comfortable with government prescriptions for everything. The end result is that alarming numbers of people consider government (a) able and (b) trustworthy enough to ensure "fairness," whatever that means, by running businesses and ordering individuals around.

Those are exactly the opposite of what the government is supposed to be doing.

-- CAV