Immanentize the Eschaton

I listen to Howard Stern on my drive to and from work. I usually enjoy the show, but I generally change the station when he starts talking about government, politics, and policy. Today’s show reminded me why this is a wise practice.

Howard and the gang have been discussing the recent Citizens United decision. Stern believes that the Court got this completely wrong, and will makes what he sees as an intrinsically corrupt system even worse. He foresees the wholesale buying of Congress critters by corporations and “special interests”, and compared it to the payola scandals in radio. (As an aside, I don’t see what is so horrible about “payola”; it’s not that different than stores selling shelf space to General Mills, for example.). Stern thinks that we need more regulation of political speech and to ban lobbyists and corporations form the public square. Even if Howard’s analysis is correct (and I’m not cynical enough to agree with him), his prescription is way off the mark.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the First Amendment was intended to protect political speech above all else. Let’s ignore the fact that the Amendment gives absolute protection to the right of the people to “petition the government for redress of grievances” (also known as lobbying). Let’s ignore the irony of a self-proclaimed advocate of free speech calling for censorship.

If the danger or fear is that corporate advocacy will lead to “influence peddling”, the correct solution is to bring the power and scope of the government back to its Constitutional limits. In other words, don’t give the Congress critters anything to peddle! We have little reason to fear that a Federal government exercising the limited and enumerated powers granted in the Constitution will be irretrieveably corrupted.

The answer, Howard, is to limit government, not speech!