The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Are We Really Just Too Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore?

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

A Montana case on corporate spending on campaigns is exhuming the hoary specter of the Citizens United ruling:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, also supported the delay, but said that the case “will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United [v. Federal Election Commission] should continue to hold sway.”

Didn’t Whitman and Fiorina show in California in 2010 that throwing boatloads of cash at an election may not work?

Or, if formerly pre-emptive favorite Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC carpet bombing were really effective, wouldn’t he be, you know, a pre-emptive favorite for the GOP nomination right now?

Shag it all: let these corporations spend whatever, and let the informed voters figure out who’s worth the vote, and who is simply a venom bucket.

All of these recent attempts at federal over-reach are troubling in two ways:

  • Managed speech is not free speech, and the stronger the precedent for managing speech, the more dissent-crushing will occur.
  • Even more subtle than the attack on freedom of expression is the attack on the notion of liberty. Ginsburg and Breyer (or Sotomayor or Kagan, for that matter) support the notion of liberty? Or are they advocates for the nanny state that would eliminate liberty in the name of Holy Progress? Who am I kidding: of course they’re nanny-staters.

I would that this post were a trifle reactionary, and that the SCOTUS did not pose a threat to liberty. This blog will accept a little finger-pointing and mumblings of “tinfoil hat” in exchange for communicating the knowledge that people are paying attention back to those enemies of liberty.

via Legal Insurrection

Category: Legal Insurrection, Supreme Court

Comments

19 Responses to “Are We Really Just Too Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore?”

  1. Jgzyla
    February 19th, 2012 @ 6:44 pm

    You should correct the spelling of “to” in your headline. It’s spelled “too”, dummkopf

  2. Dandapani
    February 19th, 2012 @ 7:16 pm

    “Are We Really Just To Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore?”

    To Stupid.  Yup.

    Just kidding. LOL.

  3. ThePaganTemple
    February 19th, 2012 @ 7:57 pm

    Yeah, I would say when the only way you can make people free is to make them free against their will and compel them to respect the Bill of Rights as applied to themselves and their fellow Americans, that’s pretty stupid. But that’s about what it would take, force. On the bright side, only about three fifths of us are that stupid, so there is some hope.

  4. smitty
    February 19th, 2012 @ 8:10 pm

    It is though I was overtaken by my subject matter.

  5. Adjoran
    February 19th, 2012 @ 11:28 pm

    We already know where Ginsburg and Breyer stand on the issue – and shame on Breyer, he is an extremely intelligent and learned fellow and should know better (Ginsburg and the Wise Latina are lucky to be able to read the motions, much less understand them) – and Kagan replaced Stevens, another dissenter, so of course she will follow her ideology instead of the law.

    This underlines the importance of winning the White House.  The next Presidential term will see the appointment of 1-3 new Justices and 200-300 lower court judges to lifetime tenure, which will affect the country and the Constitution for several decades. 

    As big a jerk as John McCain could be, no one can seriously argue he would have appointed judges of the like of Sotomayor and Kagan.  And neither will our nominee this year, no matter who it is.

  6. Brett
    February 19th, 2012 @ 11:39 pm

    That was quick. So much for  “stare decisis”

  7. Bob Belvedere
    February 19th, 2012 @ 11:53 pm

    No, Adj, he would have appointed another Souter or Kennedy.

  8. Adjoran
    February 20th, 2012 @ 12:45 am

     I’ll take Kennedy over another Sotomayor or Kagan or Ginsburg any day.

  9. Adjoran
    February 20th, 2012 @ 12:46 am

     They were dissenters then, they are dissenters now.  Does anyone doubt the next Obama appointment will be their ideological twin?

  10. SDN
    February 20th, 2012 @ 6:17 am

     PT, there’s something we most of us seem to forget: nowhere in the Constitution is there mentioned a right to vote.

    Nor is that right extended by the 14th or 19th Amendments to either black men or all women respectively. All either of those say is that whatever franchise extends to white men must be extended to black men and all women respectively.

    There’s a reason for that.

    The Founders saw a warm-body democracy as the greatest threat to life and liberty imaginable. They feared “mobocracy” as they feared Hell itself.

    And the republic they laid out in the Constitution won’t work under it. As we’re seeing.

  11. ThePaganTemple
    February 20th, 2012 @ 7:04 am

     I think myself they should limit the franchise to tax payers and property owners preferably over the age of twenty one. Don’t like it, get the fuck out. Then just apply the constitution and Bill of Rights by force if necessary.

  12. ThePaganTemple
    February 20th, 2012 @ 11:10 am

     McCain made it plain he wanted to cross the aisle and work with Democrats and compromise with them for the sake of “getting things done for the American people”. He even considered named liberal Joe Biden as his running mate on a fusion ticket. This was his philosophy, that there are no differences to great that there can’t be some degree of compromise, which means he would have appointed “moderate” Justices. And whether you want to see it or not, when it comes to the things that really matter, from a constitutional perspective, there’s no discernible difference of any significance between moderates and liberals, especially perhaps when it comes to Justices.

  13. Monday Roundup 2/20/12 Sarah Palin “Chords of Memory” Edition
    February 20th, 2012 @ 2:23 pm

    […] Are We Really Just Too Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore? […]

  14. ThePaganTemple
    February 20th, 2012 @ 3:00 pm

     Oh, I see what you mean now. Sort of like David Souter, right?

  15. dmpward
    February 20th, 2012 @ 9:23 pm

    But, but, hasn’t Romney’s overwhelming dollar advantage resulted in all comers being not just diminished but destroyed by Romney’s negative campaign.

  16. Quartermaster
    February 21st, 2012 @ 7:49 am

    Only leftists, and they show it every election.

  17. Quartermaster
    February 21st, 2012 @ 7:50 am

    We can thank Andy Jackson for a general franchise.

  18. Quartermaster
    February 21st, 2012 @ 7:53 am

    I have no trouble with restricting political activity on the part of corporate bodies (there are some things for which they must be considered as individuals, but not in general). But disallowing warm body individuals from giving as much for political purposes as they want would be illegal.

  19. Dandapani
    February 21st, 2012 @ 9:32 pm

    I was yanking Smitty’s chain for his “to stupid” remark.  Grammatically it should have been “too stupid”.   I was just demonstrating, I read TOM closely. 🙂  Also demonstrating I’m a bit OCD about grammar errors. 🙁

    ETA: but he did fix it 😉