From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Thu Dec 11 2003 - 19:44:14 GMT
Hi Platt, all,
You are referring to the Supreme Court upholding the campaign finance reform
bill. As I understand it, the bill forbids "soft money" which is money that
the political parties get from corporations and unions that the parties then
use in the campaigns of specific candidates. It also limited the amounts
that individuals can donate to an individual candidate's campaign ("hard
money") to $2000. (I'm summarizing so that that others will know what
you're referring to and so I will be corrected if I misunderstand what the
issue is.)
I've never understood equating campaign finance reform with speech. Perhaps
Rick can provide better informed constitutional history background, but I
think that in "freedom of speech" our founding fathers meant that people
should be able to criticize the government without fear of being thrown in
jail. It's protection against those jack boots you're always talking about.
There may be an implicit right provided by the constitution to be able to
spend money that would counter campaign finance reform. There may be other
good reasons not uphold this law, but again, I can't see how this a limit on
speech.
A better analogy might be "voice" or the power to make oneself heard.
Campaign finance reform doesn't prevent anyone from saying whatever they
want, so it is not a limit on our right to free speech. However, it does
limit people's power to be heard. On voting day, every citizen has the same
voice (one vote), but during a campaign those with more money speak louder.
It is the power of the wealthy and the power of corporations and unions to
be heard over other individuals that is being limited.
Intellectual domination of society is strengthened when ideas are weighed on
their intellectual quality rather than the amount of money supporting their
spread. So I see MOQ justification in limiting impact of "voice" based on
wealth because it may make room for "voice" based on intellectual quality.
So, what you've called intellect's attack on free speech may be seen as a
triumph of power based on intellectual quality over power based on wealth.
Having said that, I don't know whether campaign finance reform will
ultimately have a positive or negative effect on our political system.
Platt, you can at least rejoice in that it seems to favor Republicans since
they are able to get more money from individual donors than Democrats.
Regards,
Steve
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 11 2003 - 20:03:16 GMT