Regarding Bob Minchin’s Friday column, a few things need to be cleared up.
For the record, talk of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine was advanced by one Democratic congressman, not the entire party, nor any other broad group of liberals.
No piece of legislation has been drafted, either.
Additionally, President Obama and representatives for his administration have repeatedly made clear their belief that the Fairness Doctrine should not be reinstated.
But those facts didn’t really matter to Minchin, who capitalized on typical conservative paranoia about a vast mass media conspiracy as a rhetorical vehicle to drive his column’s side argument that the Tuscon Tragedy was — wait for it — caused by liberals.
Never mind that the shooter’s reading list featured a blatant anti-government strain.
Never mind the shooter’s YouTube videos about illegal currency are essentially a stripped-down version of a typical Glenn Beck program.
Never mind that most of our country’s leaders have rightly declared that the shooter wasn’t exactly a crazy far leftist or a crazy Tea Partier but was rather just crazy.
As in apolitically deranged.
Further, to address Minchin’s contention that “liberalism cannot survive in the arena of ideas,” which, let’s face it, is like calling your momma fat in the world of politics, I’d like to remind him that it has been the progressives from both parties that have advanced the best ideas of the past few generations.
Be it women’s suffrage, civil rights, clean water standards, higher education standards, regulations to ensure fairness and equity in the marketplace or social safety nets that have lifted millions out of poverty and into the middle class, liberal ideas have fared pretty well in every intellectual arena that they’ve been tested.
The more astute readers out there might notice that Republicans advanced some of these ideas.
Unfortunately, it seems that intellectuals are increasingly being turned away from the GOP.
But rest assured, they’re always welcomed at a gathering of the UF College Democrats.
Matthew Christ is a third -year advertising and political science major. He is also the vice president of community outreach for the UF College Democrats.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this column.
