I am arguing that some restrictions on what can be advertised commercially is justified in the public interest. I leave you to present whatever dichotomy therein that you wish.
People always seem to be greedy on this. You simply cannot have it both ways. If you want to make the argument that conservatives are a bunch of dunderheads that aren’t interested in a message board devoted to fighting ignorance, then you simply must admit that there is a left leaning bias on the SDMB first! If you aren’t admitting the bias, then you can’t make that argument.
You can’t have the cake and eat it too and all that.
Which is a violation of the rights of those supporters to have free speech.
That’s great. For socialist Europe. We don’t pass laws prohibiting political speech in the US because it’s illegal under the first ammendment to the constitution. Even if it were a good idea, which would work well, two things that I am far from being convinced of.
The phrase “justified in the public interest” is so watered down it has no meaning.
Preventing a mafia don from ordering a murder is “justified in the public interest”. So, we don’t protect that speech.
I think that John Kerry being elected would be bad for the country. So, preventing him from speaking in public or advertising in any way would be “justified in the public interest”, right?
If you can simply ignore our constitutional protections whenever they are “justified in the public interest” then why bother having any protections at all? Because it really depends a lot on who is doing the justifying and who is deciding what the public interest is!
Let me try and explain it a different way.
Yelling “bomb” on a plane isn’t what’s illegal. Creating an unnecessary security issue and a possible public panic is. The “speech” of yelling the actual word is not banned to stifle some message of the speaker, it’s for safety.
Preventing a criminal from telling an associate to kill someone isn’t illegal. The actual murder and conspiracy to commit murder that took place is. The “speech” of talking about the murder is not banned to stifle some message of the speaker, it’s banned because it’s part of a criminal act.
When you talk about banning advertising from the airwaves, you are banning speech because you want to block the political message that a group is trying to get out. The other examples you continually bring up aren’t even close to the same thing.
(Except censorship, which does lean in that direction as I have already stated.)
I’m still working on it, Debaser. For some reason I’m having trouble scaring up interest among Euro Dopers, and I can find no relevant statistics or comments in the Wikipedia article on campaign-finance reform (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform). But I have run threads on the same subject before, in GD and in GQ (see, “How does campaign financing work in countries other than the U.S.?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=223440 – and nobody, yet, has suggested any way in which the public campaign-financing systems don’t work, in countries that use them.
Of course I can, Debaser. I’m a lawyer. It’s perfectly acceptable to make your case by pleading logically incompatible alternative theories.
If I’m to be converted to straw, I’ll have more fun dancing along the yellow brick road with Dorothy. Cheerio.
The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone’s right to buy or sell ad time or ad space, Debaser. That’s commerce, not speech, and the state has legitimate authority to regulate commerce.
Furthermore, the First Amendment has never been held to guarantee broadcast media the same degree of freedom print media enjoy. The FCC restricts broadcasters’ freedom in all kinds of ways.
You’re presenting a false dichotomy here, Debaser: Europe=socialist, America=capitalist. As though that were somehow written into a Constitution that was drafted before the idea of socialism was even thought of. The Constitution doesn’t prohibit socialism in the U.S., with the arguable exception of the Fifth Amendment’s ban on taking private property for public use without compensation – and I expect the Socialist Party USA or the Labor Party or the Green Party or a coalition of them, if they ever rose to political predominance here by electoral means, could find perfectly constitutional means to implement at least some socialist policies despite the Fifth Amendment.
That’s easy enough to take care of – define any transfer of money to a politician or political organization as the crime of bribery.
He shoots, he scores! 
To be serious for a moment … this is an issue that I have trouble with. On the one hand, I resent the influence of monied interests in our political system. It’s manifestly undemocratic, and, if I may, un-American, that a poor man with a good idea is at such a great disadvantage in our political system.
On the other hand, I greatly fear the imposition of restraints on political speech. Where do you exactly draw the line between allowing someone to support a particular political point of view and prohibiting that person from contributing money in order to support that point of view? It’s not a line that I’m afraid to draw, but I still haven’t figured out exactly where it goes. And I do share the concern for “unintended consequences.”
In fact, I think that there are some election laws already in place (mostly in state and local elections) that offend my idea of democratic freedom. In particular, I’m thinking of nonpartisan races and open primaries. I believe that political parties should be free to choose their candidates without interference from those who would rather not declare themselves members. And I believe that any person should be allowed to express support for a political platform and have that political affiliation reflected next to his or her name on the ballot. I know that candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, for example, are restricted from certain kinds of political speech and that, to me, is a problem. (Whether or not judgeships should be elected offices is a different question.)
Add term limits to my list of undemocratic laws.
It’s great that you’ve found a website that lists the logical fallacies and are trying to put it to good use. However, you don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of what most of them actually mean. You’ve accused me of three seperate logical fallacies now, and all of them are way off base.
I was making an honest attempt to try and explain to you what should be obvious. If I mis-stated your position, then please clarify the point and move on with your argument. I certainly did not construct a weak argument for you and then attack it, which is the definition of a straw man logical fallacy. I resent your repeated attempts to pin these logical fallacies on me that are clearly all way off base.
Even the 22nd Amendment?
Hmm, you do make an interesting point here. Laws banning any group or individual from buying political advertising is clearly a violation of free speech. However, if you block the act of giving money to politicians, there isn’t any speech directly involved. You are indirectly blocking it, because they won’t have as much money to buy ads. But, that argument is very thin and indirect.
I would certainly take issue with you including “political organization” in the definition, though. How is it a bribe if I want to give my money to the NRA or the ACLU? You would certainly have to keep this activity legal because it can only be a bribe if you are giving money to a candidate or at least an organization directly controlled by a candidate.
If you restate it to be: “define any transfer of money to a politician as the crime of bribery.” then you indeed have found a way that would attempt to limit the amount of money in politics and would not be in violation of the first ammendment. However, I still think it would be a foolish idea.
Of course. We should be free to elect someone president as many times as we wish.
That’s what I had in mind. A political organization is one concerned with supporting the election of candidates (with money or advertising), not one that merely advocates for an issue or a candidate.
Term limits aren’t about our freedom to choose who we want in office, ascenray. How much control do average citizens have, anyway, over what names appear on the ballot on election day? Term limits are about politicians’ freedom to hold office, which, rightly or wrongly, is already limited in many ways (for instance, in many states convicted felons can’t hold office). And they were thought up to counter the whopping political advantage of incumbency, which many Americans do view as a problem.
That said, my take on term limits is that, if we have them, they should not be lifetime limits. I have no problem with the existence of a specialized occupational category of career politicians – government is a complicated business and needs the attention of specialists. If we had a system where, for instance, you could serve a term (or two, or three) in Congress, then sit out and be free to run for Congress again in two years, that would eliminate the (personal) advantage of incumbency while still leaving us with a large pool of experienced legislative talent. And you could spent your sit-out time serving in some other office, such as your state legislature.
Yeah, well, that still leaves us with the problem now represented by the “independent” activities of the 527s.
I feel that the expected effectis not to “prevent” a political message from being heard, more that all messages are heard equally. Whether they are accepted by the listening populace is another matter.
Take this board. Wouldn’t a debate be ridiculous if one person got to post 10 messages for each one of his opponents post. One shouldn’t “win” because they shout louder or more often.
I see the cost-free limited equal time solution as a vast improvement to our unchecked system.