Free Speech, Porn and Politics
This is the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Dare I say it?!? The aim of these words is fairly clear, no? They are written to protect the press, political debate, and religious expression from the government. All these things are often mixed together, and all these things are protected in a single amendment. If you have any doubt as to what these simple words mean, happily for you, fate has ordained things so we know who wrote these words, who supported these words, and what everyone thought of them at the time. It’s all on the record.
Yet today the press censors itself, filtering out all who disagree with its radical agenda; the Supreme Court approved Campaign Finance Reform Act bans many kinds of political speech; and religious expresssion is often forbidden by the Supreme Court. We should also add that any sort of mixture of religion and politics, which is one of the biggest no-nos in the public square is somehow now seen to be forbidden by. . . the First Amendment, of course.
But the Supreme Court does use the First Amendment to allow young women to get paid by dirty old men to dance naked, as this is true “self-expression,” which must mean the same thing as that other phrase that is actually in the Constitution. . . what was it again? Oh yeah, “freedom of speech.” Hell, if we banned strip clubs (or let elected officials and town boards ban them), next thing you know we’d have to ban the Nutcracker and the Wizard of Oz in schools or something.
Lets not stop here! Porn of all kinds ought to be available in seconds to all, without any sort of filtering on the internet, be they 10 year old girls looking for “riding boots” to go ride their horsey or dirty old men looking for. . . other things. Clearly an instant, unfiltered portal o’ porn in the center of every American home is what the visionary Madison and Co. had in mind when they wrote those words that we vaguely remember. It’s all self-expression under the First Amendment–but God forbid what would happen if political or religious speech on the public airwaves went unchecked! For these reasons, I like the editorial posted below. I fully support this effort, and wish to offer my services to the Bush Campaign. His name will go a long way in the effort to come up with some snappy titles.
Maybe you are too damn lazy to click to the Wall Street Journal here and register in order to read this editorial, so I post the whole thing below:
Are pornographic campaign ads the way around McCain-Feingold?
Friday, July 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Does it strike anyone else as odd that the Supreme Court seems to be providing more First Amendment protection to pornography than to political speech?
This seems to be a fair question following the Court’s decision this week to frown upon, for the third time in eight years, a Congressional law attempting to protect minors from sexually explicit material on the Internet. In contrast, the same Court was only too happy last year to endorse the substantial limits on political speech that were part of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform. Somehow we doubt this is what the Founders had in mind in passing the Bill of Rights.
The Supremes have yet to rule on the merits of the Child Online Protection Act, so it’s too soon to say whether the Court will break with legal precedent and carve out new protections for pornographers. This week’s decision dealt instead with the more narrow question of whether a lower court was correct to issue an injunction against the law, and it ordered the court to commence a trial.
Yet that didn’t stop the 5-4 majority in Ashcroft v. ACLU from delivering a sermon on the perils of curtailing free speech. “Content-based prohibitions, enforced by severe criminal penalties, have the constant potential to be a repressive force in the lives and thoughts of a free people,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. He also noted it is important to guard against such threats even when Congress was determined to pass a law. What a relief that Larry Flynt can keep pretending he’s Thomas Paine.
Alas, such high-minded sentiments were not on display last December when many of the same Justices decided to let Congress ban political speech as long as it is financed by the wrong people, or in the wrong way. The perverse consequences of that decision are already showing up in the multiple and inventive ways that political activists are trying to evade McCain-Feingold’s Rube Goldberg legal framework during this election year.
For instance, the National Rifle Association has created a satellite radio program (“NRANews”) that reaches some 400,000 listeners. If the advocacy group runs old-fashioned political ads about candidates within 60 days of an election, it will violate McCain-Feingold. But as long as it is producing news or commentary, the NRA can speak to its heart’s content, much as the New York Times or this newspaper does every day. Sincere congratulations to the NRA for its creativity, but this is the kind of absurd hoop-jumping that the Court’s First Amendment dereliction now requires.
Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission has landed the duty of deciding who else can speak, or not. Last week it delayed a decision on whether Michael Moore, creator of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” must stop airing ads about his anti-Bush film, since those ads contain unflattering references to the President seeking re-election.
Mr. Moore is an “artist” whose expression ought to be protected by the First Amendment. Yet if he can freely advertise his propaganda condemning a political candidate during an election season, why can’t that same political candidate make a movie extolling his own record and advertise that? But, no, that might violate McCain-Feingold.
On the other hand, if a right-wing pornographer made a pro-Bush film featuring erotic scenes and put it on the Internet within 60 days of an election, would the Supreme Court call it protected speech? Just asking.
Well said. Our forefathers would be deeply upset.
newenglandlad
April 26, 2009 at 11:56 am