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no limitation on speech is acceptable.
I saw armed police beating elite Ivy League students for exercising their 1st amendment right to free speech.
And I live in a Monarchy.
Last timd I saw tgat happen in my country was in black and white footage of the late ruler era. He had just dodged 2 assassinations and coups. The establishment was cracking on everybody.
Ths irony.
I draw the line here (hypothetical and not so hypothetical scenarios):
Philip Morris bribing (ahem, lobbying) Congress to pass legislation to drop the age it is legally permitted to sell cigarettes to.
Lockheed Martin, lobbying the President for war against country xyz to drive sales of military gear to their favorite proxies.
I can go on.
An addition to your already valid argument.
"Lobbying".
In normal countries, lobbying is called by its rightful name. Corruption.
The Presidency, Senate, Congress, executive and legislative arms of government are all bought for.
Is the judiciary bought for too? If not, How long before it is?
@MentORPHEUS You are, in essence, looking to define what speech is acceptable. The decision of Citizens United wasn't a new law, it was a ruling on existing law, that decided that no limitation on speech is acceptable.
So where are you willing to draw the line, and how do you defend that line?
@redpillschool What do you mean "curtailing IT" here? "It" being openly removing long established and reasonable/effective limits on individual and corporate giving to thence influence upon candidates and parties.
Never mind abstract spirit. What do you think of the current fruits of the removal of these guardrails, specifically Elon Musk and Miriam Adelson donating $100MM each, and now freely dismantling the Government agencies that regulate his businesses in the case of the former, and getting ICC judges banned from US travel, and countries enforcing the ICC's rulings against Israel threatened by the US Military in direct contradiction to Trump's OWN campaign-stated measure of his Presidency?
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@MentORPHEUS I'm not against what you're saying in spirit. I'm just wondering how you could justify curtailing it legally while still being pro-liberty.
@redpillschool I see where you're coming from with this example, but the processes that the Citizens United era took all the guardrails off from are far from offering T-shirts for sale with a slogan or candiate printed on them to do the influencing.
Whereas a businessperson or oligarch would have to have his relatives from Junior to Grandma each give a donation at the statutory limit of say $1000 to stay within the letter of the law before; now they are almost completely free to directly give limitless cash or in-kind donations.
Partisanship also plays a huge role. The same people I listened to railing about "Soros this" and "Soros that" during D administrations, not only don't bat an eye but ACTIVELY DEFEND Trump taking 7-8 figure donations from the likes of Miriam Adelson and Elon Musk, then ACTIVELY DEFEND every obvious quid-pro-quo policy change and action that these buy, even those that directly go against their stated principles of prior decades and their personal wealth and class interests.
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@MentORPHEUS Okay but think about this. What if I'm a business owner and I decide I want to throw political slogans on my t-shirts. I think it will sell. Would I not be able to if it benefits a candidate? Where do you draw the line at "okay that's the speech I don't want you doing!" and would you be the baddie if you drew that line?
@redpillschool Do you not remember the zeitgeist that culminated in Citizens United? Corporations made the argument that corporations = people and money = votes. The Supreme Court upheld this essentially enshrining it into law. Now it is considered "normal" especially by the Right and the modern Anarcho Capitalist branch of Libertarians.
"One man, one vote- money be damned" was long held as an ethos essential to valid and healthy Democracy. Now, "One rich man, millions of votes, after all he must be better than us average bears having made all that money" is not only passively considered normal, working class people actively argue in favor for it when it appears to be "Their Guy" doing it.
GayLubeOil and maybe Destraht would have called out the Slave Morality that underlies this attitude.
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Thank you. That is exactly my point.
Special interest groups have billions if not trillions of dollars at stake. The fact that some people believe that they'll allow the average every day man to have sway in the decisions that can affect their interests is naive.
