I am not debating whether there is some platonic ideal of a government and/or a law that, if enacted by the right people, would result in a better situation for all of us.

I will say, however, that Bellamy is dead. We are stuck with what we can do with what we have and, realistically, if a law is written to restrict speech (which is, of course!, *NOT* what anyone in this thread is arguing for… just arguing against the arguments against it) it *WILL* be written by corrupt lobbyists and voted upon by corrupt politicians and signed by a corrupt president.

The best that I can *POSSIBLY* hope for in that situation is a belief that speech (ESPECIALLY POLITICAL SPEECH) is sacrosanct might hold off laws that will have people alternately saying “well, I didn’t want *THAT* to happen!” and “at least we tried something!”

The ideal ain’t gonna happen.

I’m arguing that “nothing at all” is better than what we’re likely to get if we try to improve on “free speech”.

And, once again, I find skepticism of free speech far more troubling than skepticism of government being able to find a good balance.

For the record, however, I suspect that all y’all will get your way and something better will be attempted.

And, for the record, when stuff starts happening, I believe that you will not have intended for the stuff that will happen to have happened.

Yes that is insane. Who said that?????

So what you are saying is government is evil and the source of all problems, so lets not have much. Which would be fine if there weren’t’ massive power imbalances in society. I think and I am sure you disagree that one of the functions of the government is to try to mitigate some of the power imbalances and to arbitrate between different groups that have legitimate desires. That is part of the purpose of the constitution, to set rules for how are to get along with each other.

I guess I think it is better if we have good laws then bad ones, and i am hoping we can have good laws. And I think it is possible for us to have good laws as opposed to bad ones.

If you want to discuss that problem, discuss that problem. Perhaps we could discuss whether there is too much power concentrated in one city on one coast of the country. Perhaps we could discuss whether Federalism would work this time.

Having “there are too few people/corporations running things” followed by “maybe we should give even more power to our betters” is *INSANE*.

Do you honestly think that the too few people/corporations will have less of a voice than, say, you (as in you personally) when it comes to writing the new laws? Do you think that these too few people/corporations will be looking out for you (as in you personally) or in their own best interests? Do you think, at the end of the day, that you will be better off once our betters have regulated speech even more, with laws written by the lobbyists who donate the most to the Congressmen/Senators/President voting on and signing the law?

I’m saying “It’s an iatrogenic disease”.

You’re responding with incredulity that I wouldn’t want to go to the doctor to get treament for a disease.

The text of the constitution is great. And people have only been arguing about the original intent of the framers since, ohhhh…about, 1800, when the original framers started arguing about. Our task in a democracy is making it work, since the various rights and statements sometimes conflict or are less then clear.

My discussion of this post is focused on what I thought was freddie’s topic of campaign finance, not all the legislating morality crap dave and jay are throwing in. In regards to the way we elect politicians there are tremendous power imbalances that result in a very few people, those with money, having a massive and deleterious affect on our country. There is nothing in our constitution that says we are supposed to live in a country run by the few for there own benefit, yet that seems to be what we have, at least in terms of economic policy. It looks to me like we have less democracy then we should since only a few get to have influence on our policies due to way we finance campaigns. So i am open to solutions to solve this and have yet to see any from the conservative or libertarian side. I am not even sure if Dave and Jay think it is a problem that our country seems to be run, in many ways, by a small number of rich businesses and people. Throwing up the legislating private morality stuff is off the point, especially since none the Lib’s are suggesting that and we tend to agree with you on the government staying out of private morality.

Oh..if liberals seem schizophrenic on some issues it may be because, i at least, not to speak for anybody else, think you have to look at a specific issue in context and understand what is going on in that circumstance. Absolutism, which i am not totally against, tries to ignore context and the differences in each issue.

Jaybird goes in that direction:

As time goes on, it gets more and more difficult for me to tell the difference between moral busybodies who want to protect me from views that they themselves find abhorrent.

Richard Epstein concurs:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2737

My fear is that the American left chiefly understands liberty by carving out some preferred class of “intimate” associations of two (but in an unexplained burst of traditionalism, most definitely not more) individuals. After all, even on associational freedoms, the American left has become far more statist in rejecting freedom of association claims in the Boy Scout and campaign finance cases. Its support for gay marriage, therefore, looks opportunistic because it refuses to apply the same standard of free association to economic legislation for fear of what it will do to unions and their fiefdoms.

In its own way, the moral left is as authoritarian as the moral right. Judged against the left’s own fractured standard, the conservative criticisms of judicial activism hit the mark. But the conservatives’ plea for democratic federalism in defense of traditional values, and then for a constitutional amendment, is wholly misguided. Restore individual liberty to center stage, and this state restriction on same-sex marriages falls to the ground with the same speed as the full panoply of employment regulations, and the extension of antidiscrimination laws into ordinary social and religious affairs.

Nobody. People are just explicitly saying that they *TOTALLY* respect the ideal of free speech in a post titled “the campaign finance law we have sucks only a little more than the alternative” where libertarians are mocked for being absolutists on such ideals as “free speech” which, of course, we all support but, man, aren’t libertarians silly for being absolutists?

Nobody’s talking about “something ought to be done” at all. Surely, it’s the furthest thought from anybody’s mind.

Yes, when I was at Redstate and someone discussed drug legalization or gay marriage, someone would always pipe up with “You can’t legislate morality!” and, of course, the Redstaters would come down and explain, slowly, that there were laws against murder, there were laws against theft, and there were laws against rape. Of *COURSE* you could legislate morality!

Hurray!

I always tried to point out that there were matters of morality and there were matters of taste and matters of morality… and attempts to define matters of taste as matters of morality were usually described as “you can’t legislate morality” when it was probably better said “you shouldn’t confuse matters of taste with matters of morality when it comes to making explicitly immoral stuff illegal.”

The discussion seems to be equivocating between of course we shouldn’t legislate against speech and man, if only the right people were enforcing the right laws…

Which brings me back to Dobson’s endorsement of powers for Bush that he never would have wanted for Clinton.

I don’t think it’s a strawman, dude.