Regulated Speech

McCain-Feingold is arguably the worse government intrusion on individual rights that the U.S. has ever passed into law. In fact, it is because of this law that I was unable to support McCain for president.

The consequences of McCain-Feingold being passed by Congress, approved by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional has been to create a significant chill in the free exchange of political ideas during elections. It has led to repeated attempts to circumvent the law by relying on American tradition of free speech. The latest example was the creation of documentary films of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the last election cycle by Republican partisans (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090321/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_clinton_movie). The Federal Election Commission ruled that ads promoting the film were political advocacy ads and not film marketing ads and prohibited them from being aired. The film production company (Citizens United) took the case to court. Federal courts have upheld the FEC's ruling. The case now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Freedom of speech is the most fundamental individual right. As long as freedom of speech is protected, then one can argue and lobby peacefully for the restoration and protection of other individual rights even if they are currently being abrogated by the government. When free speech is not an option, then force is the only alternative remaining to protect your rights from a government that fails to recognize and protect them. It is time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned McCain-Feingold and restored our constitutional right to free speech (the constitution contains no qualifiers stating you have the right for speak freely except ...).

Side note: McCain-Feingold came into being as a response to concerns that money is corrupting politics. The expenditure of money to promote or defeat a candidate or initiative is the exercise of free speech. Money in politics is not the problem. The reason that there is so much money in politics today is because our government has strayed from its strictly limited responsibilities to be intimately entangled in economics and taxation. To put it bluntly, there are trillions of dollars at stake. Much of the money being spent on the outcome of elections is viewed as the required bribe or tithe to ensure that an appropriate percentage of the spoils of government taxation and economic regulation are turned towards the person making the political contribution. There is only one way to reduce the amount of money in politics: Reduce the role of government.