Posted on 04/04/2002 12:50:45 AM PST by leadpenny
Bradley A. Smith
Commissioner, Federal Election Commission
Bradley A. Smith was appointed to the Federal Election Commission in May 2000. Prior to that, he was professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. His writings on campaign finance and other election issues have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Legislation, the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and many other publications. He has testified numerous times before Congress, and is a frequent contributor to USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. In his earlier career, Mr. Smith was a practicing attorney, U.S. Vice Counsel in Ecuador, and general manager of the Small Business Association of Michigan. He received his B.A. from Kalamazoo College and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
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The following is abridged from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on February 5, 2002, at a seminar co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.
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Back in 1996, I was on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer with the president of Common Cause, who complained that "major interests that have an outcome in the election and an outcome in policy" are able to give money to campaigns. "They want access to influence in the political process," she said. "It's corrupting." Think about that. What she was saying is that if you have a stake in government policy, it's corrupt for you to try to influence who gets elected. Far from the motto of the American Revolution -- "no taxation without representation" -- the motto of campaign finance regulators seems to be "no representation if possible taxation." If government is looking to tax you or regulate you, they argue, you ought to lose your ability to participate in democracy.
Link to rest of speech.
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Was Madison Wrong?
Edward J Erler
Professor of Political Science,
California State University, San Bernardino
Edward J. Erler, professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, received his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School. He is the author of The American Polity: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Constitutional Government (Crane Russak, 1991) and numerous articles in political philosophy and constitutional law. Among his most recent published articles are "From Subjects to Citizens: The Social Contract Origins of American Citizenship"; "Crime, Punishment and Romero: An Analysis of the Case Against California's Three Strikes Law"; and "Californians and Their Constitution: Progressivism, Direct Democracy and the Administrative State." Dr. Erler has been a member of the California Advisory Commission on Civil Rights since 1988 and served on the California Constitutional Revision Commission in 1996.
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The following is abridged from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on February 7, 2002, at a seminar co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.
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In 1792, James Madison wrote that the natural right to property was the most comprehensive of all the natural rights that provided reservations against governmental sovereignty. "In its larger and juster meaning," Madison wrote,
" . . the right to property embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of a peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."
Madison thus viewed the right to property as the comprehensive right which assumed a kind of priority in the political community.
Same link as above.
"Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College (www.hillsdale.edu)."
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