I notice that all the people advocating these reforms have yet to explain how you can ban movies and books and prohibit people from distributing leaflets criticizing politicians without violating the First Amendment.
Perhaps they could so.
I don’t agree with book-burning, but I’m happy to hear from people explaining how it doesn’t violate the Constitution.
People on this board tend to not be low information voters. A third of the voters in this country are swayed one way or the other each election.
You do understand that a poll of a given group of people can’t necessarily be extrapolated to the public at large, right?
No one is expecting you to get all the votes, but if you can get a chunk of the undecideds that can sway elections your way.
Huh? In all three examples the signs are posted on someone’s private property, directly.
No. Joe, personally, put up those signs. He didn’t get paid to put them up. He put them up himself. Personally.
So, just because you make wrong assumptions, you’re free to violate the man’s freedom of speech?
Just like the scale of the “speech” of the one with two houses on busy thoroughfares is far above the amount of expression of someone living in a studio apartment somewhere in the boonies. And yet you have no problem there.
Yet Joe’s speech on that ten thousand billboards is not commercial. It is his private property, and he puts up his political expression on it. No one paid him to do it.
I know. It is the “We are the smart ones, but those unwashed masses, they have to be protected from themselves” liberal attitude that I see so often.
Uh, you could have a law stating that you can’t.* Tah-Dah!*
Also, calling this book-burning is hardly reasoned and dispassionate.
Killing is always illegal. Political speech isn’t. I’m not seeing the analogy.
But that’s not what the OP is arguing for. He’s arguing for banning all paid advertising, no matter the source.
Suppose the billionaire wants to make a downloadable, youtube movie about the life of Barack Obama. Is he allowed to do that? Under what restrictions, if any, would he have to operate?
So, you don’t believe that self-selected group polls shouldn’t be extrapolated to the populace at large?
What else don’t you believe in, evolution, global warming, physics or chemistry?
Again, you are more than free to not understand that a poll of people who follow politics can’t be generalized to the populace at large, who don’t follow politics, but you shouldn’t expect people to respect your opinion.
In your haste to defend truth and justice, you neglected to post your cite. This could leave the unfortunate presumption that your citation, while based upon fact, is based upon facts that are given a generous and lenient interpretation. Just for one “for instance”, it this only about the money the campaigns spent, or does it include “outside” money spent on behalf of a candidate, but not by the candidate?
That might be necessary if your “facts” were met with universal acceptance. Were they?
Political speech shouldn’t be illegal. But spending unlimited money projecting it should be.
The analogy was based on the idea that because editorials will still exist it is somehow impossible to curtail other types of political advertising.
And I’d be perfectly okay with that. I was talking about Bricker’s nonsense about Obama having more money (from more voters) as somehow sinister or equal to ten or twenty billionaires deciding an election unilaterally.
Personally, I’d say that he can’t promote it legally or sell tickets to it.
If I want to produce the film,* “Mitt Romney, Rat-Fuck Mormon”* and post it on Youtube, I’m not sure how anyone could stop me. But I shouldn’t be able to buy commercials directing people to it or do mailings with the URL.
If blogs pick it up and it hits facebook, that’s a different thing than TV ads or the like.
Well, it can be, depending on the nature of the sample; but, you’re right, the Doper crowd is not a representative random sample of the general American public (in fact, we’re not all Americans).
My god . . . This has me imagining a terrible dystopian future. So If I am un-happy with my government I can make a movie, or write a book expressing myself? However, if i attempt to disseminate the information then I am breaking the law. Where does this eagerness to give away America’s most fundamental freedom come from?
You may think it is hyperbole, but i find it truly disturbing, the idea that speech is ok, so long as you set the limits as to who can hear it and how it can be disseminated. Fuck that. Which of the other amendments should we gut while we are at it? Religion is OK, but only if it is kept in church, so shall we allow for the free practice of religion, so long it is done within some wise and well defined limits?
This was the FIRST amendment for a reason, it has worked just fine for two hundred odd years, eviscerating it because of the belief that our momentary political problems cant be solved any other way is no different than the Right’s attempt to bring prayer into schools or stop the burning of the flag.
I believe that you should extend the same respect to populace at large that you extend to the self-selected group. And not regard them as silly children who are easily swayed while you and your friends are the smart ones.
I’m not suggesting that I be held to laws that others are not.
Do you honestly believe this line of argument, or do you just not have anything else to give?
I honestly believe that to argue what you and BrainGlutton are arguing is indicative of enormous contempt you hold for a great portion of US populace.
You mean like that anti-GWB movie in 2004?
Anyway, since we’ve come to the conclusion that restricting political advertising is unconstitutional, how about the reverse: banning all press coverage? People can say or spend what they want, but the press can’t cover it. The government owns the airwaves, so it can say that equal access = no access, right? Wouldn’t stop hoardings or hustings or conventions or rallies, but those are more traditional, personal, methods of politics. And outside the home.
I believe France has something along those lines.
It was the *first *amendment because the first two weren’t ratified, as I recall.
In any case, you are simply resorting to histrionics. There are laws that limit speech now. I’m sure you’re aware of the crowded theater fire thing, right?
The question is does the limit serve a public good. And yes, not letting the ten or twenty richest people in America decide the elections is probably a good thing.
No, it isn’t. Democracy means making the state do what the people want it to do, that is all. Democracy is not a theory of good government, it is a theory of legitimate government – that sovereignty over the state is ultimately vested in its people collectively, because, well, who else? It is not based on the assumption that they know what is good for them, but that no selection of the people can be entirely trusted to be wise enough or good enough to make that call for the whole. Or, as William F. Buckley put it, “Democracy is not an IQ test, it is a way of saying no.” (One could add with as much force, “or saying yes.”) Or, as H.L. Mencken put it, “Democracy is the idea that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
And if you don’t trust the think-they-know-best “liberal elites” to dominate that system, still less should you trust the eye-on-the-bottom-line business elites.
Not at all. In any large group you’re going to find people with different interests.
What is surprising is that you think a self-selected poll, which is self reported (after all, people are saying they aren’t swayed, we don’t know if they actually are) is somehow an intelligent way to predict the actions of a vast majority of people. That suggests you’re simply ignorant about how polling works. And because you don’t understand it, you’re coming up with a vapid argument about holding Americans in contempt.
I don’t hold America-at-large with contempt. I hold the sort of people who think buying elections is all well-and-good in contempt.
That is not being proposed. :rolleyes:
The laws that limit speech are very well defined and largely to promote public safety. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre is not self expression. What you are trying to ban is more like not being able to yell “Obama sucks!” in a crowded marketplace.