The Coming Repeal of the First Amendment

The Democrats want to protect free speech...

...as long as you're an "artist" who works in the medium of religious icons suspended in urine. Or a pr0n merchant whose market is web-surfers in public libraries. Or an American who regularly converses with terrorists overseas.

But if you're a conservative who dissents from the official worldview?

First Amendment? What First Amendment?

In Washington State, according to George Will, Democrats are leading a crackdown on conservative talk radio, under the guise of "campaign finance reform":

When the state's government imposed a 9.5-cents-per-gallon increase in the gas tax, John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur of station KVI began advocating repeal by initiative. Proponents of repeal put up a Web site, hoping to raise 1,000 volunteers and $25,000. In two days they had 6,500 and $87,000. Needing 224,880 signatures to put repeal on the ballot, they got 400,996.

Isn't that what the First Amendment is all about? Reaching people? Providing a vibrant dialogue?

Or are "vibrant dialogues" only for people who agree?

Appalled by this outburst of grass-roots democracy, some local governments, which stood to gain many millions from the tax, unleashed a law firm that would gain substantially from handling the bond issues the tax would finance. The firm set out to muzzle Carlson and Wilbur, using the state's campaign regulations.

It got a judge to rule that the broadcasters were not just supporters of the repeal campaign, they were agents of it. Why, they had even used the pronoun "we" when referring to proponents of repeal. Their speech constituted political advertising, and their employer was making an "in-kind contribution" to the repeal campaign. The judge said a monetary value must be placed on their speech (he did not say how, he just said to do it that day). The law says reports must be filed and speech limits obeyed or fines imposed.

This, of course, is the ultimate goal of campaign finance "reform"; silence unapproved voices. Including yours.

State law restricts to $5,000 the amount a single giver can contribute in the three weeks before an initiative. If Carlson's and Wilbur's speech were monetized at radio-advertising rates, they would be silenced for all but about 15 minutes in each of the campaign's crucial last three weeks. They continued to talk (the repeal campaign, outspent almost five to one, lost 54.6-45.4) and, aided by the libertarian litigators of the Institute for Justice, have taken the issue to the state Supreme Court.

What has happened in Seattle prefigures what a national Democratic administration might try to do—perhaps also by reviving the "fairness doctrine" (an "equal time" regulation)—to strangle conservative talk radio. And what has happened here—the use of campaign regulations as weapons of partisanship—is spreading.

It is, in fact, a current bubbling under the surface of the Democrat party's campaign. Amazed at the power of the conservative alternative media, the left's been fiddling at the edges of the First Amendment for years; last year, stung by the effectiveness of conservative bloggers, they flirted with trying to classify partisan blogging as "campaign contributions".

This is the America produced by "reformers" led by John McCain. The U.S. Supreme Court, in affirming the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold speech restrictions, advocated deference toward elected officials when they write laws regulating speech about elected officials and their deeds. This turned the First Amendment from the foundation of robust politics into a constitutional trifle to be "balanced" against competing considerations—combating the "appearance of corruption," or elevating political discourse or something. As a result, attempts to use campaign regulations to silence opponents are becoming a routine part of vicious political combat.

The ironic thing, of course, is that it's the left that caterwauls constantly about the civil liberties the Bush Administration is attacking (hint: nobody has lost a single civil liberty under the Bush Administration), while at the same time aiming their jackboots at the necks of those who disagree with them.

Maybe if we suspend a model of the Green Bus in a jar of urine, they'll get the point?

Posted by Mitch at October 3, 2006 06:14 AM | TrackBack