Posted on 12/07/2002 5:25:22 AM PST by geedee
On Friday, I delivered an EIB Primer on American Liberty in response to a Washington Post editorial earlier this week on the so-called campaign finance reform issue and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Second Amendment. You must listen to the audio of my defense of freedom below, and realize that it's impossible to ensure that every view is equally heard and supported in the media.
History makes clear that not even iron-fisted dictatorships can completely enforce equality of speech. The same applies in a republic. Even throwing people in jail won't maintain government limits on speech. That's what CFR supporters are basically doing: engaging in a false premise that they can control the fairness and equality of speech by taking the "money" out of it.
In the first place, the undefined notion of "fairness" and equality in political speech is none of their business. Did you know that James Madison had a weak speaking voice? He did. Yet he did not write the Constitution to ban loud, eloquent orators from running against him. The government does not and should not control speech. The Post writes that if CFR opponents win, "corruption will have been transformed into a legal right."
CFR insulates our officials from the people in the same way communism or dictatorships do! On Thursday, a judge finally asked a CFR proponent: "Give me one example where the donation of money has equaled corruption in government." It's the politicians, not the money, that are corrupt! There will be less competition in the arena of ideas under CFR. The press will still enjoy free speech, but not you. Those claiming to be "reformers" seek to limit the amount of influence the public - you - can bring on your elected officials.
You can no longer join with like minded people in groups like the Sierra Club, NRA or ACLU to put on an issue ad. Not all donations are bribery or corruption, as John McCain claims. Do we want to throw people in jail if they dare to question the position of a candidate or an incumbent during the electoral process? Our system works better than anything that's been tried in all of human history. Don't mess with it just because some politicians are too thin skinned to take criticism, or too corrupt to take money without doing something illegal to get it.
A little side note . . . Rush has Carville's latest memo on his website. I started to post it but it's 12 pages long and the Rush detractors would scalp me.
Stop it with the whining about the "Rush detractors" already. If you're so thin-skinned, you're NOT going to last around here.
Let 'em gripe. For every one of them there's three or four of us.
If either of you are Rush "24/7" (I'm not) subscribers, maybe you could shoot him a copy.
How about a link? Although for archival purposes, the entire note would be better placed here.
Here's the link to Rush's main page . . . http://rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html
And here's the link to the pdf file . . .http://fp.rushlimbaugh.com/@v=0212060830@/download/Price_of_Silence.pdf
Are you also saying you want me to post the entire twelve pages? Free Republic wouldn't mind me taking up so much room?
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