Op-ed column: Expensive speech By David Schlosser, candidate for U.S. Congress
Week of 28th June 2006 Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court decided in Randall v. Sorrell that Vermont's strict limits on political contributions and expenditures unconstitutionally interfered with the First Amendment. The disappointing aspect of the ruling is that the court did not go far enough to restore Americans' strangely limited free speech rights. That right was so important to our country's founders that they included it in the first article in the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. As a society, we accept the First Amendment does not grant Americans unlimited rights to free speech. We commonly note that the First Amendment does not protect yelling "fire" in the absence of an actual threat. We're currently engaged in a debate over the rights and responsibilities of the news media when reporting on intelligence programs that may compromise the prevention of terrorist attacks. With rare exceptions like those, Americans do not typically accept limits on our speech. Unlike many European countries, we do not ban speech that society considers offensive or wrong-headed. Racists and historical revisionists freely promote their peculiar beliefs, and occasionally make news with Ku Klux Klan rallies and demonstrations at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. Organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League carefully track and report those activities. Counter-protests are emerging as an effective response to offensive speech. And well intentioned laws to prevent offensive speech make strange bedfellows of the American Civil Liberties Union and groups its members consider abhorrent, reminding us of Evelyn Beatrice Hall's summary of Voltaire's essay on tolerance: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Except, strangely enough, when it comes to political speech. Americans accept broad, deep limits on political speech in various forms: limits on campaign contributions; limits on political expenditures; limits on the times, dates, and locations of political speech and advertising; limits on the kinds of organizations that can and cannot support candidates in various ways and at various times; and on and on. The McCain-Feingold "reforms" make it virtually impossible for third parties to speak during the final days of a campaign - which is to say, when most citizens actually start paying attention to the issues and candidates. This is both odd and dangerous because, despite what the political correctness police would have you believe, the answer to challenging speech is not limiting that speech. The answer is more speech. John Stuart Mill observed that free speech is the guarantor of progress. We will never know if an unspoken opinion contains an element of truth. And, without having to defend one's beliefs from competing or contradictory opinions, those beliefs wither. We forget why we ever believed them in the first place, allowing weak or wrong arguments to topple them. Mill brilliantly noted that the most accepted beliefs are the beliefs that most need challenging, because conventional wisdom is the kind most likely to fail when no one understands why it became so conventional. Philosophy is nice, but in real life, the efforts to limit the role of money in politics - which, by the nature of our society, limit free speech - has the perverse, unintended consequence of making money the focus of a candidate's political life. Running a political campaign is expensive. Printing brochures, yard signs, and bumper stickers; paying parade and county fair entry fees; recording commercials; buying radio, television, newspaper, and Internet advertising; building and maintaining a Web site; travel; renting office space and computers. any candidate for major office can easily spends tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars a month. And yet campaign contribution limits prohibit individuals from donating more than a few thousand dollars. Those limits require candidates to recruit thousands of people who can donate that sum - a disruptive and potentially corrupting practice. So "reformers" take the bizarre next step, which the Supreme Court stuck down in Vermont, of limiting the amount of money candidates can spend. It costs more than a million dollars to run an effective Congressional campaign. No matter how many laws we pass requiring it to cost less, it still costs more than a million dollars. If it costs more than a million dollars, and we make it hard to raise a million dollars, candidates are going to spend more time raising money and less time attending to their representative responsibilities. And candidates will come up with creative ways to motivate people to donate to their campaigns - some as blunt as Rep. Duke Cunningham's bribery, some as clever as Rep. Alan Mollohan's funneling of public money to agencies that pay him rich fees, some as boring as inserting earmarks in spending bills, some as appalling as taxes or laws that favor individuals or industries to the detriment of their competitors. The simple solution to this problem, ignored by policy makers and judges across the country, is to eliminate campaign finance limits and require full and immediate disclosure of campaign contributions. Americans are wise enough to decide if a candidate funded by a million-dollar donation from the gambling industry might have a vested interest in pro-gambling legislation. They are also smart enough to judge if a candidate funded by thousands of small contributions from individuals in her district might better represent her constituents than a candidate funded by one big contribution from a distant union. Pressure from opponents and media coverage of political contributions - which is non-existent because today's limits make it irrelevant - would encourage candidates to avoid the appearance of impropriety. And the elimination of contribution limits would put an end to the vast money laundering machine that exists solely to spread vast quantities of special interest money among dozens of ideologically identical, obscurely named front groups that make small donations to hide the ultimate source of the money. If you want to get money out of politics, there is one and only one way to accomplish that goal: eliminate the power of politicians to create laws that reward their friends and punish their enemies. But that is a topic for another column. # # # Libertarian candidate for U.S. Congress David Schlosser, 38, lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he is a public relations manager for a global microprocessor company and has been a part-time instructor in the School of Communications at Northern Arizona University. He brings nearly a decade of political experience to his campaign for Congress, and is a graduate of Trinity University and the University of Texas. His wife, Anne, is a corporate training and development professional. For more information about Schlosser and his campaign for Arizona's First Congressional District, visit www.SchlosserForCongress.com <http://www.schlosserforcongress.com/> . Authorized and paid for by Schlosser for Congress, Scott Gude, Treasurer [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/2pRQfA/bOaOAA/yQLSAA/KlSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
