I was surprised to read a recent poll that a majority of people disagreed with the recent supreme court decision on free speech. There is actually a brilliant analysis and explanation here. Really, I mean Americans against free speech? Hello Fidel? Excuse me but I should be clear. First of all anyone opposed to the decision most likely doesn’t understand it and second of all probably doesn’t understand how it is barely relevant. However I’ve also seen supposedly respectable thinkers suggesting a constitutional amendment. I think perhaps the worst thing is the hypocrisy of our president opposing it and the extremely bad manners to chide the supreme court in the state of the union. Hey, if he would take that kind of tough posture with Iran…
First of all the decision didn’t reverse 100 years of law, it reversed 10. Second of all it didn’t change the law about companies contributing directly to candidates. What it did do is give companies the same right as individuals to have political speech. Now let me tell you why Obama is a hypocrite for opposing it.
One result of this decision was that the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform law was shot full of holes. Early on Obama swore he would accept government money and be constrained by McCain Feingold. John McCain accused him of lying because he didn’t. Deceit or not what Obama did was brilliant. By opting out he was no longer under the same spending constraints and he raised twice as much money. Can you buy an election? Maybe, maybe not, but it never hurts to have twice as much money as the other guy at crunch time. Of course McCain was fighting with one hand tied behind his back as it was his law but you can bet Obama had already killed much of McCain Feingold as dead as McCain’s presidential hopes in 2008. Nobody will ever accept government money again.
The restriction the law imposed on corporate speech led to the 527 groups. These took money from companies and unions and effectively laundered the money that was going to be used before. Nice solution. Remember what happens when you try to take freedoms. The 527s were the speakeasies where nobody knew how it got there but everybody knew it was getting out to the public. Just like banning liquor made bootleggers banning companies from speaking made 527s.
Of course there were exemptions under the law. Try newspapers, networks and magazines. Imagine if you will banning blogging. Imagine banning free speech. Actually you don’t have to imagine. President Obama has been compared to Wudrow Wilson as he was our first president out of academia. Wilson gave us the Sedition Act duing WW I. Look it up. If you said something against the government in public you could be locked up without due process. it’s frankly hard to believe so I suggest you go look for yourself. This is the point. Once you decided to allow some free speech of some types by some people but not other free speech of other types from other people… well you might as well tear up the first amendment, install censors in news outlets and close the internet because it’s only a matter of time before you are charged with sedition.
Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. Read the first amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
BTW I love the constitution and the amendments for their simplicity. The 2500 page bills out of this congress are so incomprehensible you need 15,000 pages of reference material to read them. Odds of understanding and conforming to such laws? You simply empower administrators to interpret it as they see fit and rule by fiat. Not so our founders. Tell me part time citizen legislators would pull this, but I digress…
If you make a law which will abridge free speech you are violating the first amendment. The exceptions are where you can prove public endangerment, inciting to riot, libel or violating the rights of another. However if there is any speech that ought to be protected it is political speech. There is no more important freedom than the freedom to peacefully change our government through elections. Once that speech has been abridged not only have we been violated but we are dis-empowered to effect peaceful change. Such a loss of empowerment could only serve to empower tyrants.
To paraphrase the president in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, this is not a red or a blue country, we are all Americans. I agree, and that means that we don’t shape a law today for it’s statistical probability of benefiting a political party, then change it later. We should especially not do this with our constitution. We should all agree that free speech is too important to play political games with. Moreover we should be thankful our supreme court continues to believe this and concerned that such questions even need be litigated. John McCain and Russ Feingold should both be removed from the senate for violating their oath to protect the constitution and subjecting us to 10 years of unconstitutional law.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 11:41 PM and is filed under social commentary.
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Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Free Speech
I was surprised to read a recent poll that a majority of people disagreed with the recent supreme court decision on free speech. There is actually a brilliant analysis and explanation here. Really, I mean Americans against free speech? Hello Fidel? Excuse me but I should be clear. First of all anyone opposed to the decision most likely doesn’t understand it and second of all probably doesn’t understand how it is barely relevant. However I’ve also seen supposedly respectable thinkers suggesting a constitutional amendment. I think perhaps the worst thing is the hypocrisy of our president opposing it and the extremely bad manners to chide the supreme court in the state of the union. Hey, if he would take that kind of tough posture with Iran…
First of all the decision didn’t reverse 100 years of law, it reversed 10. Second of all it didn’t change the law about companies contributing directly to candidates. What it did do is give companies the same right as individuals to have political speech. Now let me tell you why Obama is a hypocrite for opposing it.
One result of this decision was that the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform law was shot full of holes. Early on Obama swore he would accept government money and be constrained by McCain Feingold. John McCain accused him of lying because he didn’t. Deceit or not what Obama did was brilliant. By opting out he was no longer under the same spending constraints and he raised twice as much money. Can you buy an election? Maybe, maybe not, but it never hurts to have twice as much money as the other guy at crunch time. Of course McCain was fighting with one hand tied behind his back as it was his law but you can bet Obama had already killed much of McCain Feingold as dead as McCain’s presidential hopes in 2008. Nobody will ever accept government money again.
The restriction the law imposed on corporate speech led to the 527 groups. These took money from companies and unions and effectively laundered the money that was going to be used before. Nice solution. Remember what happens when you try to take freedoms. The 527s were the speakeasies where nobody knew how it got there but everybody knew it was getting out to the public. Just like banning liquor made bootleggers banning companies from speaking made 527s.
Of course there were exemptions under the law. Try newspapers, networks and magazines. Imagine if you will banning blogging. Imagine banning free speech. Actually you don’t have to imagine. President Obama has been compared to Wudrow Wilson as he was our first president out of academia. Wilson gave us the Sedition Act duing WW I. Look it up. If you said something against the government in public you could be locked up without due process. it’s frankly hard to believe so I suggest you go look for yourself. This is the point. Once you decided to allow some free speech of some types by some people but not other free speech of other types from other people… well you might as well tear up the first amendment, install censors in news outlets and close the internet because it’s only a matter of time before you are charged with sedition.
Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. Read the first amendment.
BTW I love the constitution and the amendments for their simplicity. The 2500 page bills out of this congress are so incomprehensible you need 15,000 pages of reference material to read them. Odds of understanding and conforming to such laws? You simply empower administrators to interpret it as they see fit and rule by fiat. Not so our founders. Tell me part time citizen legislators would pull this, but I digress…
If you make a law which will abridge free speech you are violating the first amendment. The exceptions are where you can prove public endangerment, inciting to riot, libel or violating the rights of another. However if there is any speech that ought to be protected it is political speech. There is no more important freedom than the freedom to peacefully change our government through elections. Once that speech has been abridged not only have we been violated but we are dis-empowered to effect peaceful change. Such a loss of empowerment could only serve to empower tyrants.
To paraphrase the president in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, this is not a red or a blue country, we are all Americans. I agree, and that means that we don’t shape a law today for it’s statistical probability of benefiting a political party, then change it later. We should especially not do this with our constitution. We should all agree that free speech is too important to play political games with. Moreover we should be thankful our supreme court continues to believe this and concerned that such questions even need be litigated. John McCain and Russ Feingold should both be removed from the senate for violating their oath to protect the constitution and subjecting us to 10 years of unconstitutional law.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 11:41 PM and is filed under social commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.