From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Dec 17 2003 - 12:18:42 GMT
Matt,
> Platt said:
> There can be little doubt that the reform bill engages in "speech
> regulations" and thus on its face, threatens free speech rights.
>
> Matt:
> Of course it limits speech. That's not the question. As Stanley Fish
> famously argues, there's no such thing as free speech and its a good thing,
> too. Why? Well, lets have my favorite turn of the century pragmatist/law
> professional, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have the first word:
>
> "[T]he character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is
> done.... The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a
> man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic...."
>
> So there are always limitations on speech, no matter how you cut it. Platt
> is simply wrong when he says, "the First Amendment to our Constitution
> expressly forbids Congress from passing ANY law 'abridging the freedom of
> speech.'" It may say it, but every law professional knows that it ain't
> true, nor should it be true.
What we're talking about here is political speech as opposed to commercial
speech and incitement-to-panic speech. I thought that was understood.
> So, what kind of speech should we allow, what should our regulating rule of
> thumb be? The first restriction is Holmes' rule of "clear and present
> danger". Us leftists also vote for something like "fairness" based on the
> American ideal of "equality of opportunity," which last time I checked most
> people still pay homage to. But Platt shows his colors:
If "most people pay homage fairness and equality of opportunity," their
status as a static social patterns is established. It's the job of
intellect to challenge such unthinking, knee-jerk, fundamentalist social
patterns.
> Platt said:
> What is evil in the MOQ is for "fairness," a social pattern, to devour
> "free speech," and intellectual pattern.
>
> Matt:
> Well, there it is. "Fairness" in Platt's taxonomy is a social pattern.
> I'm not so sure it is, but even if it were that's not what Platt's argument
> hinges on. We all know that Pirsig says that the upper levels need the
> lower levels to exist. I'm not sure if Pirsig says this, but to me I find
> it pretty convincing to suggest that the lower levels also need to be "in
> order" for the upper levels to do their thing, i.e. the lower levels need
> to be, to some degree, clicking on all cylinders. If the body has cancer
> and dies, that particular intellect would disappear, no more ideas, no more
> free speech. If the US was taken over by a dictator, if democracy
> disappeared, their would be no more free speech. To me, if we accept
> Platt's taxonomy, Platt's argument hinges on whether "fairness" is really
> devouring free speech in this particular case.
Your plea that the social level needs to be "in order" and "clicking on
all cylinders" leaves me wondering what those phrases mean. Must the
intellect accept the social level's blind acceptance of "fairness" in
order to make sure the social level is "in order?"
> I don't think it is. I think this because who are the people who have
> access to free speech? Rich people.
You know as well as I do that people of all income levels have access to
free speech through organizations that represent their views. The NAACP,
ARP and the CIO come immediately to mind.
>Madison's vision of a plurality of
> competing interests all keeping each other in check against a tyranny of
> the majority is fatally flawed because he didn't account at all on the
> influence of money. As Schattschneider famously said about four decades
> ago, "The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings
> with a strong upper-class accent." Why did Madison neglect the role of
> money? Because the only interests the Framers were speaking about and
> interested in all had enough money to have their interests heard because
> the only people that could vote, the only people who were allowed into
> politics, were rich, landed white guys. We do have a tyranny, but it is
> not by a majority of individual people, but by the people who have the
> majority of money.
See above where the "poor" are well represented in the marketplace of
ideas. As for tyranny of people who have money, perhaps you'd like to
compare the tyranny of Stalin to the tyranny of the Kennedys?
> I'm not interested in condemning the past. The only weak thing that needs
> to be said is that Madison's idea was limited by his historical context.
> But I emphatically say that THIS IS NOT THE WAY THINGS ARE NOW. Everybody
> is technically allowed into politics, but the reality is far from this. To
> help the reality of our situation match with the hopeful vision of our
> rhetoric, we need to allow poor people into the marketplace of ideas and
> one of the currently conceivable ways to do that, one of the hard fought
> for compromises, a real politik, reform conclusion reached by both a
> conservative and a liberal, is to restrict some of the money being spent by
> the rich, just as we had already decided was legitimate to do 30 years ago.
Should we also restrict some of the money being spent by rich groups, like
Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition?
> Why would the rich not want this? For the same reason that Madison and the
> other rich white guys didn't want to give democracy to everybody else: they
> were afraid of the poor taking away all their stuff. Its conceivable that
> Madison should have feared this possibility. Fact of the matter is,
> though, their are very few Commies out there now in this day and age who
> want to abolish private property.
There are very few out there who have any idea of why private property is
essential to maintaining their liberty. By definition, those who are
prevented from owning property are slaves.
> I for one think it is a bad idea. But I
> do think some measures of redistribution, like free health care, should be
> in order, would in fact be a great thing.
How can health care be "free" when health care providers must be coerced
to provide the care? What's "great" about forcing your neighbor at the
point of a gun to fulfill someone else's "need."
> Is that taking away all of the
> rich people's money? No. Would it be a slippery slope? I doubt it. As
> long as we keep teaching the kids Hayek and the failures of communism,
> nobody will think its a good idea and nobody will want it.
From what's going on at most college campuses, the kids have no idea who
Hayek is nor are they taught the similarities between the goals of
communism and socialism. They are not taught, for example, that Nazi
stands for National Socialist German Workers Party and that part of its
program was to nationalize industry and redistribute income.
Platt
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