I know many liberals (me included) are against the flag-burning amendment. (I don’t personally support flag burning. And I would certainly never do it myself.) So why would an amendment overturning Citizens United be any better?
It may sound silly. But I am reminded of the episode of the Simpson’s (“The Day the Violence Died” aired March 17, 1996). “I’m an amendment to be…” the bill sings. Then when he’s ratified, he says “Oh yeah! Doors open, boys!” (Here’s the whole song, if you’re interested: http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Amendment_Song.) Then all these ruffian and outlaw amendments start charging in. But I think the point is, if we allow one amendment to limit the First Amendment, we open the door to others. And I think that is always a bad idea.
I mean, if you support the overturning of Citizens United (and I do too), then just take a closer look at the judicial nominating process. And support more like-minded judges.
It is so hard to get an amendment to the US constitution ratified that only non-controversial ones can become law. If an amendment, overturning Citizens United, receives broad bi-partisan support, it will pass. But other amendments, disliked by Democrats, would remain unpassable.
Those who oppose Citizens United (like myself) generally believe that the problem with it is that money isn’t speech, and that therefore the case does not in fact relate to the First Amendment. The proper solution would be another court ruling overturning it and getting it right, but an amendment clarifying the situation would also work (albeit it would be swatting a fly with a sledgehammer).
But the whole point of the case was that speech isn’t money and shouldn’t be regulated as if it’s money. Spending your own money to run your own ad on a TV station is speech, not a donation to a person who might happen to have their prospects of winning the election enhanced or diminished by your independent ad.
I think plenty of countries get along just fine with more restrictive campaign laws than we currently have. So, I generally think we would be fine with tightening those laws, whether it involves passing a law, getting a new court ruling, or amending the constitution in some limited way.
But the proposition that fixing a problem is going to lead to terrible things, therefore we shouldn’t fix the problem, is a textbook definition of a fallacious slippery slope argument. It’s not worth taking such a poor argument seriously.
I believe that the restriction of political expression, when the restriction is related to the political speech itself, is wrong in virtually any situation (I’m sure we can come up with some tortured hypothetical). Restricting the means for making that expression amounts to the same thing. This is simply axiomatic for me, that free societies, those that respect personal liberties, don’t restrict political expression.
I have no fear of anyone’s ability to say what they’d like. I respect the American public’s ability and right to make of the speech whatever they’d like. As Scalia said, the First Amendment provides no foothold for restricting free speech based on the person or group making that expression. That’s as it should be. “That group’s political message is dangerous and offensive, so shut it down” is a chilling notion. I am not aware of any restriction of political expression, other than anti-sedition laws (and I have issues with that), where that restriction is specifically to completely shut down that exercise of free speech.
That would be bribery, which is not what Citizens United was about, nor do I know of anyone putting forth an argument that bribery is an exercise of free speech.
The question basically illustrates that not all politics activity is speech. But we create an idea in our kind of what is and is not speech. If we want a particular activity to be protected, we (in the royal sense) abel it speech and therefore it is protected by the First Amendment. If we do not think a particular activity is a good thing, we label it not speech and therefore is unprotected.
So ultimately, we end up with odd interpretations of the First Amendment such that a person can only give $2,000 to a candidate to pay for speech to convince people to elect that candidate, but the same person can use unlimited funds to convince people to elect that candidate so long as the candidate doesn’t touch the money. This silly arrangement has very little to do with the text of the First Amendment, really. So the idea that the First Amendment can’t be compromised upon is belied by the current patchwork of laws that array exist regarding politica speech.
In other words, the horse has long since left the barn.
Shit, a lot longer than that! American politics has long been enslaved to the Golden Rule: the guy who’s got the gold makes the rules. Quite a few of us think that is inherently unjust, hence, wrong.
Speech is not labelled as such arbitrarily. Restrictions on campaign contributions are not per se a method of restricting a particular expression; rather, the courts have ruled that the government has an interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption, as well as even the appearance of such corruption. Consequently, Citizens United did not change restrictions on campaign contributions. It did permit independent bodies from expressing their views as they saw fit.
I’m personally troubled by some of the logic for campaign restrictions, but at least it’s purpose is to safeguard against corruption, not specifically to prohibit certain people or groups from free expression in other ways that don’t contribute to someone directly. Limiting free speech solely because of who is making the expression (what CU overturned) is a non-starter.
It’s not about who you are limiting your speech. It’s about how much money you have limiting your speech. That’s the issue. It’s not free speech if some rich asshole can blanket my town in advertisements but the average guy on the street can only use word of mouth. Allowing more money to mean more speech just creates a drowning out effect.
And, no, restricting the amount of money isn’t perfect. Better would just be to make the speech itself free and tax people for funds that everyone can use. But at least it limited the effect. What Citizens United did was remove those limits and make everything worse.
It’s freedom of speech, but some speech is more free than others.
Edit: And they could pass a law making it where you couldn’t by a book. They made rationing laws before. And to this day there are laws that prohibit the sale of liquor to certain people at certain times. The only problem might be the “book” part, since you’d be limiting the speech of the person who wrote the book.
The government definitely has the right to limit what you can buy. Hell, I forgot about drugs.
What bothers me is the fiction that if someone were to give, say, $3,000 directly to a candidate for the candidate to run ads touting his positions, that would be on shaky ground as a quid pro quo. But if a millionaire wanted to spend tens of millions to tout the candidate in ads that were not coordinated with the candidate’s campaign office, then the candidate is presumed to owe nothing to that individual. It’s totally absurd.
Take for example Ted Cruz. Three times more money has been raised for Cruz-associated super PACs than he has raised in direct contributions. Of the super PAC money that has been raised for him, 95% was due to contributions of just three people. I’m not making any of that up. Someone would have to be a damned fool to think that there’s no appearance of corruption when three men have provided $36 million of the $54 million raised to help get Cruz elected.
And just to be clear, my comments in this thread aren’t limited or directed to Citizens United. It’s about the First Amendment and regulation of campaign funds in general.
I actually think there’s merit to this argument, but the direction I go in is what I mentioned troubled me earlier about restrictions on campaign donations. I tend toward the thought that anyone who wants to contribute to a given candidate ought to be able to, as much as he’d like. It’s his money. Disclose donations. I don’t buy the “appearance of quid pro quo” argument and I likewise don’t buy the notion that this is a minimal restriction of free speech, as Buckley argues. I understand those dopes on SCOTUS didn’t agree.
But I agree, ISTM the logic for campaign donation restrictions does at least appear to offer a basis for restricting independent expenditures. The genie is out of that bottle. But that restriction can’t target specific types of speakers, not if Citizens isn’t overturned. But let’s not pretend this wouldn’t be a restriction of political expression.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t the “millionaire” already have the ability to set up a super-PAC prior to this ruling, provided he did it with his own money? What the ruling did was say that folks could pool their money for the same purpose, as long as they did not coordinate things with the campaign.
