You’d have to repeal the 1st amendment first. Good luck with that. (Well, actually I wish you bad luck with that).
Uh, no. The public airwaves have always been regulated. Everybody can’t have their own radio band to operate on, so they have to follow government regulations. Cable isn’t regulated in that manner, although the same limitations are really there. Cable companies and sattelite communications use lots of public resources, and IMHO should be regulated the same way.
What I was responding to was:
“You can enact criminal penalties for political spending.”
Not without repealing the 1st amendment.
You can regulate public airwaves - but most of information today has nothing to do with public airwaves. Over-the-air TV (and, increasingly, radio - see Pandora) is a relic of the past.
I do not believe you are at all bothered by the prospect of plutocracy, so I understand your feelings, though of course I do not share them.
Strangely enough, I agree with you. We must fight the monster that is real, the one that threatens to destroy democracy, and that’s plutocracy. That is really all the justification we need. Repeal the First Amendment? All for it, if we replace it with something that guarantees freedom of speech and limits the power of plutocrats to control our public media.
Again, bad luck with that. I assure you that when you come to take away the 1st amendment, you will most probably be met with 2nd amendment solutions.
I’m not posting about the thread topic itself, but:
I wasn’t aware that 50.8% is a small fraction. Even restricting to just women of reproductive age, you’re talking about 20% of the population. Not a majority (duh), but far from being “some small fraction”.
Bpelta, you need to develop a better vocabulary on these issues. Just saying someone is “a conservative” without any context doesn’t make a lot of sense. A person can be (i) conservative or liberal on fiscal issues and (ii) conservative or liberal on social issues. A person that is conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues is a libertarian.
So, you saying “he says he’s a libertarian but I think he’s a conservative” is just all kinds of :dubious:.
I understand that in your opinion, if I said Bill Buckley or Russell Kirk were conservatives, that wouldn’t make sense since maybe they’re liberal on some issues.
We have terribly different epistemologies.
This is so elementary, yet so widely ignored, despite all the clusterfuck thinking, policies and movements it gives rise to.
I use words in a meaningful way and you don’t. That’s the difference. It makes no sense at all to say a person “is a conservative” unless you give some context (i.e., whether you mean “on social issues” or “on fiscal issues”).
I realize that half the population is female, but the portion that gets abortion is relatively small. But hey, I know, you’re more knowledgeable than a doctor and have more at stake than any mere pregnant woman.
Your feeling may be … just a feeling.
Google for it if you’re curious who would have won the 2000 and 2004 elections if only those with more then four years of college could vote.
… because those without four years of college must be idiots. Or those after four years of college cannot be idiots. Right?
Listen to the “democracy lover.” Faced with an outcome he does not care for, he hauls out the guns. So much for your pretense of caring about democracy.
You come for my rights, you get what you deserve.
Uh… people who aren’t idiots understand that in statistics one uses “proxies” as substitutes for attributes difficult to quantify.
I suppose we could let you decide who’s an idiot. I suppose then your prophecy would self-fulfill. 
Sure. But only if there is direct correlation between “proxy” and the attribute you’re trying to quantify. Which hasn’t been shown.
So I advocate for an amendment to the Constitution designed to rewrite the First Amendment so it can’t be used as a tool for plutocrats to buy our government lock, stock and Congressman, and you haul out the guns. Yeah, you love democracy all right … so long as you get your way.
Rights such as freedom of speech are not created by the Constitution. The Constitution acknowledges them but does not create them.