The Fight Against Another Progressive Attack On The First Amendment

Forbes ^ | August 6, 2017 | George Leef

[reaganaut1]

The First Amendment gets in the way of many “progressive” goals and you often hear them say, “Sure I’m in favor of free speech, but…..” There are so many possible “buts” to complete that sentence that the First Amendment would by now just be lifeless words on parchment if it weren’t for vigilant defenders.

One of those “progressive” goals is to make politics more fair by taking out private funding as much as possible. Recently the city of Seattle, fresh from curing poverty with its $15 per hour minimum wage, decided to clean up politics with what it terms its “democracy voucher” program.

Here’s how it works. During each election cycle, residents of the city can demand up to four vouchers, each for $25, which they can then contribute to candidates running for city council and city attorney. Candidates who accept the vouchers have to agree to prescribed spending limits.

Isn’t this just a reasonable measure that will make city politics more responsible to the people?

That’s questionable, since special interest groups tend to find ways of influencing officeholders even if they didn’t make big campaign contributions, but the problem here isn’t the objective. The problem is the means. The Bill of Rights stands in the way of many laws that have (or purport to have) good objectives and this is an instance.

The tax that funds the vouchers is levied on all Seattle property owners. It takes money from them and, through the medium of the vouchers, gives it to political candidates – candidates with whom they may strongly disagree.

[rhubarbk]

In loving memory of my father who often said, “anything said before ‘but’ means absolutely nothing.”

[Boomer]

If we could afford to be really patient; common sense and past history has shown these socialist enclaves always fail. Just look at IL and now CA soon to be in the news for its poor socialist spending.

Of course we could look at Greece, Venezuela, and even Puerto Rico as living examples of leftist socialist ideology failing. Socialism eventually runs out of other peoples money to spend for one reason or another. What rich person in their right mind would continue to let a state or country rape them of their hard earned money.

We can’t afford to be patient with these rogue places in America who want to change our Constitution to fit their ideology.

[Ohioan]

Almost all of the things that the Left has sought, in clear violation of both the letter & implications of the First Amendnment, would be clearly wrong, even were there not a First Amendment. The "but" employers, referred to, are those unable to respect other people, in much of anything.

The deliberate undermining of the Amendment has been systematically pursued by hypocritical zealots, actually pretending to the "Libertarians."

First Amendment.

[Pontiac]

The deliberate undermining of the Amendment has been systematically pursued by hypocritical zealots, actually pretending to the "Libertarians."

Anyone who supports government taxing the people to advance a goal of government, no matter how Nobel, can call themselves a Libertarian.

[Ohioan]

But never logically or truthfully. Attempts at social engineering are the exact opposite of the pursuit of liberty or anything else of actual value! As my piece linked above develops, the ACLU is actually at war with American liberty—and has been since its birth in the 1918-1920, organization.

[KyCats]

True. Socialism always fails eventually.

But it doesn’t matter. There is never a “lesson learned” moment about it all. The failure is flushed down the memory hole by the media and the cycle starts all over again at the beginning.

[Svartalfiar]

How about this: what if we limit campaign contributions to physical presence? You can only donate to a mayoral candidate if you live in or have a business in that city. Same thing with county-level, or state-level elections.