Are you forgetting that the 1st amendment not only guarantees freedom of speech, but also freedom of the press? Even a staunch literalist like myself can understand that “the press” means “all media”, and not simply “newspapers”.
Every broadcast television or radio station uses a limited public resource – a particular band of the electromagnetic spectrum – and it has always been the law in this country that such broadcasters do not have the same unlimited freedom newspaper publishers have. They have to apply for a license from the FCC, and they have to render a few public services, e.g., signing up with the Emergency Broadcast System, in exchange for being allowed to camp on their portion of the airwaves. And there are all kinds of things they are not allowed to broadcast. Just ask Howard Stern. It is not unreasonable to extend these principles to require that stations run a certain number of campaign ads for free and turn away anyone who wants to buy time for political advertising.
What’s naive? There are plenty of countries (where are you, clairobscur?) where money plays – not a zero role in elections, but a much less important role than it plays in the U.S. I am merely stating the ultimate goal we should be striving towards even if we never quite reach it. Leaving aside the question of whether reaching it is possible, furt, would you deny that such a goal is highly desirable?
But there is a world of difference between recquiring some level of public service and censoring* a whole class of political speech. What is the precident for the government to wield that power?
On a practical level, all you’d do is ban ads in exchange for “Fahrenheit 9/11” type TV shows. It’s hardly a slippery slope argument to say that your next step would be to regulate political content in TV shows.
*which is EXACTLY what you are advocating, and which is EXACTLY what the 1st amendment is suppose to prevent
BG:
The more I think about this, the more I think that your view on this issue is not simply wrong, but actually dangerous. You know very well that the 1st amendment is there specifically to protect political speech. Work to change the amendment if you don’t like it, but don’t deliberately distort it. The constitution is there to protect us against the government, not the other way around.
The ironic thing is, your tactic of finding some legalistic loophole around the 1st amendment reminds me precisely of how Bush worked his way around the UNSC rules on Iraq, and which you have strongly denounced again and again. Does the US constitution not deserve at least as much respect as the UN charter and its treaties?
n.b.: I hope this doesn’t come off as a personal attack on you. It’s not menat to be. I enjoy debating with you and am commenting on the ideas you have expressed here, not on you as a person.
In this thread – “US elections vs. democracy” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=251738 – clairobscur posted the following info about French elections:
And nothing bad has come of that! I mean, France is still a free and democratic country, isn’t it? So why can’t we learn from their example?
BTW, clair also said Germany uses similar rules. Britain I don’t know about.
So why is it “dangerous” to talk about putting these kinds of limits on political spending? The First Amendment exists to protect freedom of speech. Money is not speech.
But any reasonable defintion of “speech” has to acknowledge that it cost money to get your message across. You cannot guarantee my freedom of speech if you prevent me from spending money to speak. You’re not talking about just political contributions, but the very concept of **anyone ** spending money on political ads. You would have to take draconian measures to keep money out of politics-- that’s the danger. Your goal:
would prevent me from spenidng money to stump for my candidate of choice. How would you do that without drastically squleching my ability to speak or publish my ideas?
If you really want to get the money out of politics, the best way to do that is to minimize the power of government (ie, politicians). If it’s literally not worth the money to try and spend your guy into office, then you simply won’t bother.
But if I’m a union member, and I think candidate A will legislate in favor of unions, I’m going to vote to give some of our union money to him. And if I’m a CEO and candidate B will legislate in favor of my business, he’s going to get my contribution.
That is true today. It was not true, not nearly to the same extent, when the First Amendment was enacted. The most expensive communications technology was the newspaper. The Framers never imagined anything like our modern media industries, nor their political importance.
I repeat: Why can’t we learn from France’s example? Their system – public financing of campaigns, strict limits on private political spending – works, and without squelching any party’s message. To the contrary, it puts all the parties on a level playing field . . . or is that perhaps what you’re really afraid of?
Well, I can’t guarantee your freedom of speech if I prevent you from saying “fuck”, or showing nipples in your halftime show, or falsely shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater, or reading a poem on the air without the author’s permission. But we still have those and other restrictions, and society hasn’t fallen apart.
I mean, I support the principle of freedom of speech as much as the next guy. (Perhaps more, since I run a Freenet node, and the purpose of Freenet is to let anyone say anything, regardless of content, anonymously and unstoppably.) But I think we can all agree there are times when it makes sense to limit speech for practical reasons, even if we don’t agree on the reasons.
The question should not be whether CFR restricts free speech, but whether its goal is important enough to justify the restriction. Is limiting corporate influence over our democracy as important as maintaining public safety (fire in a theater), preserving artists’ business models (copyright), or sheltering children from the real world (profanity and nudity)? I think it is.
Don’t be too sure about that, but it’s really irrelavent. If the environment has changed such the constitution needs to change, we have a process for doing so.
The only thing I’m afraid of is giving the government the power to control political speech. If you can find anything in any of my posts to indicate otherwise, I’d like to see it.
Why does France’s system “work” and ours doesn’t-- because it produces a political outcome closer to your own system of beliefs?
I suspect it produces an outcome closer to most citizens’ beliefs.
For example, here in the U.S., HDTV devices are required to obey a so-called broadcast flag that limits your ability to record and transfer shows. Such a restriction would not survive a popular vote; people like recording shows on tape and sharing them. The restriction is only there because anti-recording interests are able to exert disproportionate influence, because they have a disproportionate amount of money.
It works in that, apparently, it effectively reduces the role of money in politics – something that the OP said was impossible. (At least, if it were known to be ineffective, the influence of money trickling around the restrictions in various ways, I think clairobscur, who obviously is very sophisticated about this topic, would have mentioned that in her post.)
Are you prepared to argue that the role of money in American politics should not be reduced? I don’t mean arguments based on the First Amendment, I mean an argument that the role of money in American politics has legitimate value and produces a desirable outcome.
Listening to Kerry & the Dems cry fowl about the swiftboat ads brings to mind the old saying “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” due to their relationship with moveon.org and the slam Bush ads they’ve been running all along.
Campaign Finance Reform is another perfect example of well intentioned legislation that only created an even bigger monster.
Do you have examples of MoveOn ads that are as misleading as the SBVT ads?
Actually, not true. The custom of the time was to buy votes by supplying massive quantities of liquor. I believe Washington’s first elected office in virginia… the first time he won, cost something like 2.1 gallons of alcohol for every vote.
Source: I love Paul Revere, no matter whether he rode or not, an amusing, but researched and footnoted book about common misconceptions in american history.(I may have the title slightly wrong))
The only honest answer to this question is “nobody knows.” It’s a new law that whose parameters haven’t been tested by the courts. I’ve certainly read analyses along these lines from reputable legal thinkers. Certainly the prudent course of action for any candidate would be to refrain from making any kind of statement that might indicate he is coordinating with a 527.
You simply can’t say that as definitively as you seem to think. Again, this is an untested law. I could certainly frame a reasonable argument that a candidate “requesting” that an ad be pulled is simply a thinly-veiled cover for actual coordination, and thus a violation of the law.
No, I mean ads that have actually aired.
I wonder if doing that nowadays would cost more or less than our present system . . .
Bush could, of course, simply distance himself from the “Swiftboat Veterans for Truth” ad and say publicly he does not endorse its message and that he does not question Kerry’s military record. That would not be “coordinating” with the 527 in any sense – it would not even require any direct communication.