Make it Transparent and Keep Your Hands Off

Such is my philosophy on the First Amendment as it applies to, of all things, political speech. It's a position I've taken many times over the course of debates over the attempt by the Democratic members of the FEC to insert the federal government into web-based writing, including blogs.

Today's Washington Examiner, a new free newspaper in the nation's capital, runs an editorial that expresses the same sentiment. More importantly, it does so to an audience desperately in need of exposure to a common sense, Constitutional approach to free speech. Here's the heart of their argument:

[O]ur democracy would happen a lot better if politicians and government regulators got their hands off the campaign finance system and realized that, when it comes to ensuring an honest, fair and accountable system, less is more.

First, let's begin by laying out two basic principles that should be common sense by now. When we talk about "freedom of speech," money is - and should be - included in that category. "But more money means a bigger voice! Bigger influence!" the critics scream. Perhaps. But try telling The New York Times or the Fox News Channel that they should stop spending money trying to make their news operations as influential and popular as possible. The First Amendment is not just for journalists, it is for everyone.

Regardless of the current Supreme Court's current twisting of the law, there are NO exceptions.

Second, politics is dirty - always has been, always will be. If there were a quick fix to this enduring truism, you can rest assured someone would have figured it out sometime since Athenians started voting for their leaders.

The question, then, is how to best minimize the corrupting effect money naturally has on politics. The answer is sunshine.

This solution -- the Constitutional approach to political speech -- is so commonsensical that one's head spins at the intellectual vacuity of arguments against it. And we've heard them all before: money is the root of all (political) evil; Americans deserve to be told the truth, not lied to by campaign flacks; politicians will be bought and sold like cattle absent some regulation.

What all of these arguments amount to, of course, is the regulation of political discourse by the political class. Nowhere was this better illustrated than Pewgate, which I've written about extensively and which William Schambra covered better than anyone else in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This issue is now off-line to non-subscribers, buy you may download a pdf version of it from our site here.

At least now a debate has ensued, much to the consternation of the "reform" lobby, and legislation has been introduced into both Houses of Congress that would exempt the Net from McCain-Feingold's intrusive and, surely, unconstitutional influence. But the bottom line is, and has always been, that all regulation of political speech is forbidden by the First Amendment, and we should never allow our rights to be taken away by the self-serving do-gooders in Washington or elsewhere.