General rules–such as Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech–are pesky things. As soon as they are posted in the village square people start confusing them. Luckily, when you have dipped your pen in the minds of the founders, you know that by “freedom of speech” Congress clearly meant, “no rule limiting how much *money* you can spend on a political candidate.” After all (1) you use your money to have a candidate “speak” for you, (2) your vast sums correlate with how much you have to say (and you have a lot to say if you have a lot of money–more freedom, as it were), (3) you cannot “speak” in any other way than putting your money where you mouth is (so limiting how much freedom you have would violate your right to speak), (4) The Constitution clearly says that no law can separate you from your money, and (5) finally, no law can limit what you spend your money on, because that too is “speech.”
2 thoughts on “10 Simple Rules”
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First, in observing the number of republican congresspersons currently embroiled in campaign finance/lobbying scandals and the current hue and cry from neo-con pundits about the “sham” of campaign finance reform, methinks they doth protest too much. secondly, as i have pointed out here before, i should by now be wildly apparent that mr. will never made it past the first four amendments, as he constantly demonstrates a willful (no pun intended, but it works brilliantly, doesn’t it?) ignorance of the Ninth Amendment. no one right trumps any other, that’s why the system works–well, sort of. at any rate, will’s continual stumping against any sort of federal transparency is growing quite wearying.
i’ve read the piece again and it seems as if will is, at worst, advocating for bribery as a first amendment right, at best, arguing that quid pro quo “donations” to candidates/campaigns pose no threat to democracy! in essence, he is saying the Constitution protects one of the very things that it is intended to prohibit.