Stop it.
You keep throwing out these pointless generalities, ignoring the fact that the discussion has thoroughly addressed them.
Pretty scary when people call the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, a “guideline.”
Yeah yeah yeah. Got any more conspiracies?
No.
You can’t restrict speech. You can’t decide that some speech has too much influence, or amplifies the influence of money, or whatever. You just can’t do it. You’ll have to roll back the First Amendment first.
Nope, not at all.
You are arguing for the most broad exceptions possible. Your exceptions basically ignore the First Amendment entirely. They would do away with it. You can’t possibly argue that your exception should be accepted, but turn around and say others should be rejected. There is no grounds. You couldn’t be violating the First Amendment any more than you are now. You’re already at the bottom of that slippery slope, and you’re just waiting for others to come sliding down on your head.
Oh yeah. It means we don’t actually have any rights. All those rights we supposedly have? Just aspirations, to be set aside as soon as they are inconvenient.
The problem isn’t so much that it’s a slippery slope as much that there is no way to rewrite the 1st amendment without repealing it completely. All of the proposed anti-Citizens United amendments are either self-contradictory, rendering them legally meaningless, or give such broad censorship powers to the government that the 1st amendment no longer exists.
Yep.
And the supreme irony is that most of the proposed amendments are being advocated by organizations that would lose rights under their own amendments or using modes of speech that could be outlawed under their own amendments. And they don’t even seem to understand that.
It may have some Irony but is untrue that they don’t understand it. The factor that money brings to politics is perversive and will lead us further into a plutocratic fascist society. Abstract constitutional religiosity divorced from it’s effect on our country is not a meaningful defense. You don’t cut a baby in half because two parents each have a right to it. You look at makes sense in the real world. In the real world unlimited private money influencing our politics is destroying us. You can see the notes of the self sustaining monster in people that will gladly defend it against the interests of themselves, their friends and family. Propaganda has been able to get people to do insane things throughout history. It may not fool everyone but in a democracy you don’t need to. You just need a heap of cash to fool or otherwise neutralize most of them.
Just pray that your interests never run counter to the wealthy minority. By the time you realize they’re coming from you you may barely have the time to realize how foolish your support for them was before you’re penniless and everything you care about is in ruins.
If you’re lucky you could even become one of the wealthy, on the backs of millions and millions of exploited people. What a joy that would be huh?
And the rich rule us by persuading us to see things their way? So if you silence them, who will be our proper brainwashers? The government? Because historically, the only substitute for rule by the economic elite is rule by the state elite.
The issues with state speech are related to private “speech”, in that the abuse of it is usually related to a private interest funding the elections and personal benefits of the state operatives that use it on their behalf. Obviously you want to fight corruption of public announcements and so on.
They would not be silenced. They would have as much right to speech as anyone else. If they had good things to say people would choose to listen to them instead of it being very inconvenient not to.
Right now because of money in politics most people in the relative competition have virtually no speech. To preserve the exaggerated right of speech of the wealthy you have to accept the vastly diminished right of speech for everyone else.
How much speech anyone has is irrelevant. You may not use that as a basis for determining whether to violate speech rights. Everyone has the right to as much speech as they want. No limits.
So money IS speech now?
These things are not naturally true or untrue, they are man made conditions. As long as we allow money to be speech it is, when we stop it won’t be anymore.
The amount of speech everyone has is supremely relevant. You don’t right the rules of society by the technicalities, you write them to deal with realities. (or you’re just a big dummy).
Okay, my teminology was quite blatantly incorrect. It is the supreme law, it takes precedence over other laws as a check on the power of Congress. The Supreme Court assumed the power of judicial review in Marbury vs. Madison.
This argument is puerile. The arguments are for restricting electioneering communications in order to preserve the validity of the electoral system in the US. The validity of the electoral system derives from democratic participation in elections, indicating that the legislation passed by people’s representatives have the will of the people. In simple plurality systems, there are numerous problems with such an assumption. Incumbency is one of them, but the inordinate effect of money on elections is another.
Yeah, productive stuff like this, that, or these.
For charges of corruption, not for charges of an inimical effect. Congress may be unduly influenced by the power of money without their contributors seeking specific remuneration.
This is a deliberate obfuscation of proportional representation. To illustrate its absurdity, one would have to assume that in geographical single plurality representation, states are the same as people (or even trump people!). One must assume that individuals within a certain locale are more likely to share federal political values than those professing adherence to the charter of a certain party.
That’s precisely what it is. It is a guide for crafting legislation in ways which will not impinge on certain basic freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights. Calling it simply “the law” is false, when laws written by Congress have been held to be unconstitutional.
I’m not violating the first amendment at all. Your argument is still fallacious.
Then you’re side of the debate should stop saying “money isn’t speech” if you are going to treat it like it is sometimes.
The First Amendment does not allow you to ration speech, or any other right. Sorry. The fact that you think the First Amendment is a “technicality” is another problem for you.
If you want the government to decide how much speech everyone gets, you will need to repeal the First Amendment first.
Be careful what you say, because we’re here and we have unlimited speech rights to call you on whatever you say. 
I thought we just settled this.
“Guideline” is a biased word. It’s the law of the land, that must be followed, not just a “guideline” that might be.
It is “the law” in the general sense of the term, as in “the law of the land.” We all understand the difference between that and laws made by legislatures.
You just said “supreme law” yourself, above.
Of course you are. It’s absurd to say otherwise. You want to limit speech. Your entire purpose of limiting money spent on speech is to limit the speech itself. There’s no way around it.
How do you apply this doctrine equally? Michael Moore has more ability to spread his message than the rest of us, and apparently it is wrong for the Koch Brothers to attempt to do what he does.
Rachel Maddow has more rights than the rest of us. She gets an hour a day to persuade the public, backed by some rather huge corporations who pay for her show, yet Sheldon Adelson isn’t allowed to spend his own money attempting to do the same thing she does?
This doctrine you are pushing that everyone should have the same level of influence and money should not increase influence is unworkable. All it does is say that industry incumbents, like the mainstream media and the political class have all the speech and no one from outside those institutions may challenge their oligopoly.
It’s simple - instead of running ads on someone else’s media outlet, you buy your own! Then you’re suddenly not evil and fully protected by the First Amendment, and you can spew whatever crap you want 24/7, and invite guests to do the same. Ask Rupert Murdoch how.
Seems to me that we should err on the side of liberty. It’s kinda senseless to be complaining about money equalling influence, but being okay with the media and political class demagoguing 24/7. How does a few billionaires getting their two cents in endanger democracy given an environment where Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow, Bill O’Reilly, and Ed Schultz can spout every day?
The reformers must have us believe that Sheldon Adelson is so awesome that in 30 seconds he can make us forget everything Rachel Maddow told us an hour a day for the last three years. That’s one persuasive fellow!
Right, that’s the fatal dilemma that those who want to limit speech, or spending on speech, in the name of “fairness” - they will still have an entirely unfair system, by their own definition, unless they ration speech or spending on it for everyone. It won’t ever be fair until everyone is limited to exactly a certain amount (time? money spent?) on speech. Every person is alloted 5 minutes.