It's the Marxist way...

Marketplace Of Ideas: A conservative group wants to run a health care infomercial on a local network affiliate, but another group is trying to suppress the message. This is a new low.

When thuggery replaces debate in the political process, society suffers. There is no room in an advanced civilization for tribal conflicts. Competing ideas should be sorted out in the light, not snuffed out by intimidation. But that is exactly what a coalition organization called Democracy for America is trying to do.
A group named Conservatives for Patients' Rights has bought time on Washington, D.C.'s NBC 4 to air a 30-minute broadcast Sunday after "Meet the Press." The group describes it as a " '60 Minutes'-style documentary" that will "let people see the very real consequences of letting the government take over their health care decisions."
We haven't seen the program, which has already run on the History Channel, A&E Network and ION, and focuses on the "stalling, waiting lists and rationing and withholding care because of red tape, politics, and bureaucratic foot-dragging" that distinguish the government-run health care systems elsewhere, particularly Great Britain and Canada. So we don't know how the points are presented. But we are aware of those systems' failures and have repeatedly listed them on these pages.
Many Americans, however, are ignorant of the rationing and nasty waiting lists that are responsible for poor health and even fatalities in nations with socialist health care systems. And Democracy for America wants to keep them that way.
Even though it hasn't seen the program either, the Service Employees International Union, part of Democracy for America, has sent a letter to NBC 4, claiming CPR's program "will be false, deceitful, and a distortion" and is asking the station to refuse to air it. The coalition is reportedly also urging its supporters to call NBC 4 and demand that it drop the broadcast.
Ideally, the groups that make up Democracy for America should wait until they've seen the program and then point out the falsehoods — if there are any. But they would rather silence a voice that threatens their goal of forcing a national, government-run health care system on the country.
Let us for a moment engage in a mental exercise and imagine the outrage from Democracy for America if the situation were turned around and a right-of-center group tried to silence its message. It would be loud. And it would be justified.
While it is sometimes hard to recognize, this is still America. We are free to speak, even when what we speak is unpopular. It is an offense to our heritage for Democracy for America to call CPR into a virtual private-sector star chamber in an effort to strip the group of its right to speak freely. By doing so, the coalition, called progressive by Politico.com, is moving us backward.