I've said in the past that I'll vote for a Nazi or a Communist -- or worse yet, Hillary Clinton -- before I vote for John McCain for President because of his role in imposing campaign spending regulations that fly in the face of the clear language of the US Constitution.

Today, Bradley Smith lays out the constitutional problems with such regulations.

In his most recent Townhall column, Armstrong Williams has laid out a plan that he claims will "divorce" money from politics. In the process, Williams employs every tired canard of the campaign finance "reform" community.

But a few words were noticeably absent from Williams' column. There was no mention, for example, of "the First Amendment." Nor was there any mention of "free speech." And while I looked for "freedom" and "liberty," alas, these too were absent. This comes as no surprise. Advocates of political speech regulation have for so long felt unconstrained by the First Amendment's seemingly clear command, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech," that they now ignore it as a matter of course.

The closest Williams comes to addressing the constitutional problems with campaign finance regulation is the bare assertion that "giving money is not giving voice." But it most certainly is. In modern society, money facilitates speech. It costs money to publish a newspaper or operate a broadcast station. It is not possible to run a political campaign or effectively criticize officeholders without spending money for signs, advertisements, rallies, mailers, and more.

In his column, Williams had gone so far as to quote a misguided senior citizen who wants political speech limitation and regulation.

But I (and millions of Americans, a few of which are even lawmakers) disagree. First, giving money is not giving voice. Second, privately donated money is not necessary for a campaign if "clean" or public money is given equally to each candidate. I agree with the political activist Doris Haddock who literally walked across the country at the age of 88 in hopes of bringing about true campaign finance reform. She said, "If money is speech, then those with more money have more speech, and that idea is antithetical to a democracy that cherishes political fairness. It makes us no longer equal citizens."

Haddock, of course, is wrong -- unless one wishes to argue that the existence of large corporate media like the television networks, New York Times, and Time Magazine are also "antithetical to a democracy that cherishes political fairness" and "makes us no longer equal citizens." After all, the vast spending of these news organizations ALSO give them an unequal voice that can drown out the voices of the less well-heeled among us (such as this blogger) and get them access that the common man cannot obtain. Would Haddock (and Williams) accept the argument that "money is not speech" and therefore allow Congress to limit the budgets of news organizations and the amount that Americans spend to access the same? Or how about regulations, similar to those imposed upon advocacy groups, that ban reporting upon or editorializing about candidates and officeholders for 25% of an election year? Of course not!

Smith then points out the fundamental understanding of the Founders about the nature of men and the nature of our constitutional republic -- and Williams' fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment.

When the Founders drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they were not naïve. They knew that men weren't angels, and that factions would sometimes try to harness the power of government for their own benefit. They wrote the First Amendment with full knowledge of this threat. Indeed, they wrote the First Amendment because they also knew that one of the surest checks against government corruption was the unfettered ability to criticize those in government. Williams' scheme abandons these cherished First Amendment principles. The likely result is more and harder to detect corruption. The long term effects could be even worse. As the Founders knew, prohibiting ordinary citizens from effectively discussing politics is no prescription for clean government. It is a prescription for tyranny.

Money may or may not be speech, depending upon how you look at it -- but cutting off private money is a sure way of strangling the speech of citizens, an action which the Founders would have rightly labeled tyranny and which they would have understood merited the exercise the rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment to dislodge the tyrants.

Posted by: Greg at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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