February 2, 2010

Civil Liberties

It's Not About Trusting Special Interests; It's About Not Trusting the Government

Justin Katz

Ed Achorn puts the recent campaign-finance ruling from the Supreme Court in precisely the right light:

The problem (as the Founders well understood) is that there is no safe way for Congress to parcel out a "fair" amount of speech to the people who "deserve" it most. When they overleap constitutional bounds and seize such power, politicians invariably favor their own free-speech rights, while limiting the rights of those who might criticize them (which is precisely what McCain-Feingold did).

Politicians like to control the message. They do not want others to challenge them or cast doubt on their utopian schemes.

Politics is dirty, and democracy is messy. Passing laws that deny reality does not make the reality go away; it makes it possible for self-interest to corrupt the process.

1:41 PM | TrackBack (0)
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Do I hear an Amem out there!

Posted by: Sol Venturi at February 2, 2010 8:55 PM

Rights for immortal corporate "people"? That sound you hear is Jefferson spinning in his grave.

In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it's government and the probity of it's citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it's people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816
Posted by: Russ at February 3, 2010 4:56 PM
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