Since publishing a piece in which argue that the FCC's equal-time rule for political candidates should be abolished, I have received several responses that rely on the same argument, which I find ridiculous: Network television uses public airwaves with the federal government's permission, the reasoning goes, so the federal government should be able to regulate the content that stations broadcast — even to the point of regulating political speech, whose total protection was the First Amendment's primary purpose. It's a real "you didn't build that!" sort of rationale.

Why stop at broadcast television? Countless print publications, National Review among them, are ...

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