Ban Big Government, Not Political Speech

The Atlas Society - The Center for Objectivism ^ | October 27, 2010 | Edward Hudgins

[Ed Hudgins]

The Democrats can’t garner votes in the 2010 general elections by bragging about their legislative achievements—greater government control of our health care, more wasteful spending than ever in human history. Nor can they run on the results of their governing—chronic high unemployment and economic stagnation. So, of course, they complain about the election process, specifically about campaign spending by what they label “special interest groups.” These are not to be confused with the groups pushing special interests—government employee unions, trial lawyers—that give big bucks to them.

The “process posse” has bemoaned this year’s Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case that struck down provisions of the McCain-Feingold law that limited spending on political speech during election seasons, at just the time that free speech is most needed. The Court rightly said that businesses and unions can spend their own money on ads putting forward their views on the issues of the day.

The Dems’ special kvetch this time is that the money is from “unknown” shadowy groups and individuals, some of it from “overseas.” Oh no! Are foreign governments trying to buy our election? This charge concerns minute amounts of money collected as dues from overseas branches of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, money that is sequestered from the Chamber’s political spending and in any case is hardly a secret.

The Dems and liberals in general complain more broadly about how money dominates elections and somehow corrupts the democratic process. But as columnist George Will is fond of pointing out, Americans spend as much each year on yogurt as is spent on political campaigns. Or Proctor and Gamble spends as much on advertising their products.

But let’s discuss the process issue and put it in its proper context

The Purpose of Process

America’s Founders…

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Ban Big Government, Not Political Speech

The Associated Press homogenized the previously fractiously independent newspapers, seducing them all to join a community of self-interest. The homogeneity of journalism enables and is enforced by the claims of "journalistic objectivity" - claims that, ironically, are self-negating. The first requirement for an attempt at objectivity is to articulate what your own interest in a particular case before commenting on that case. This, wire service journalism never does. It is not because journalism does not have any interests of its own that it never does so; journalism needs to attract an audience and it systematically selects the stories is reports on the basis of criteria which will promote its readership/viewership. Journalism is tempted to conflate interesting the public with "the public interest," which is quite a different matter. To the contrary, journalism omits any mention of its own interests for the simple reason that doing so is incompatible with, and opposite to, making propagandistic claims to objectivity which are not in the public interest but which help promote its readership/viewership.

Wire service journalism never seriously attempts to actually be objective, and therefore any law which is predicated on the objectivity of journalism is unconstitutional. Such laws include:

• McCain-Feingold and all other "campaign finance reform" legislation
• "Shield" laws for reporters

The Associated Press was found to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act back in 1945. At that time the thought of breaking the AP up could not be seriously entertained because its reason for existence was still evident. In 2010, with communications bandwidth as plentiful as it is, efficiency in conserving scarce communication bandwidth is of negligible economic utility.

"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith

The Associated Press should be abolished, and broadcast journalism with it. The licensing of broadcasters gives the government unconstitutional power over the national political discourse, which can be done just fine over the Internet.