The Right to Paid Speech

A federal court took a constructivist tack today by striking down most of the McCain-Feingold Act. This will undoubtedly be decided by the Supreme Court quickly, since it has great bearing on the slowly building Presidential campaign.

Instant Replay comes down on both sides of the decision. On the one hand, the law is unconstitutional. The Constitution pretty clearly allows freedom of individuals to fund whomever they want. On the other hand, soft money is totally out of control. This is not an old problem either - it's one that developed since reform laws instituted in the 70's or 80's created limits on campaign contributions and the concept of "hard money." The current system is pathetic and corrupt, since it clearly abuses a loophole in Federal law on a massive scale.

If the system is corrupt but constitutionally protected, we must amend the constitution to better protect American democracy. It's not a right or left issue - this has the NRA and the ACLU both suing to have McCain-Feingold overturned. Rather it's between the big voices and the little voices on both sides. As a conservative, I don't want to see conservative policymakers controlled by the NRA and other big contributors. I want conservative individuals to determine their representation in Washington, and I want a system that forces campaigns to work at the grassroots level.

An amendment to the constitution will take another four or eight years. That's fine. It's the constitution, so it should be well thought-out, detailed, and without little gimmicks and compromises - such as the ban on contributions from minors that the court struck down as unconstitutional. The amendment should basically say that any paid speech is subject to limits more than free speech. Thus, if you want to open a newspaper that supports Libertarian candidates openly, and a donor gives you $100,000 to start up, that's legal. But if you want to take out $100,000 of advertising asking people to support Carla Howell, that's illegal. I don't think it's a loss to free speech for us to put limits on political uses of commercial speech. As precedent, I cite the truth-in-advertising laws. Clearly, you can't just say whatever you want. By contrast, if you publish a book on a product, you can say whatever you want about it; as far as I know truth-in-advertising wouldn't apply.

Let's preserve free speech's voice. Because, if paid speech gets louder and louder, how many of us are still going to hear the still, small voice of free speech?