SCOTUS: Government shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.

Via Big Journalism, the NY Times writes:

WASHINGTON — Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

The money may “corrupt democracy.”

Well, that’s true. It might. Let’s not fool ourselves: power corrupts. Money corrupts. That’s the whole basis for our form of government – men are corruptible, and so men must be prevented from accumulating too much power.

Women, too.

A government that can control who says what, when, and about whom, is a government eating away at the limits of government power. Controlling who can criticize you, and when, and how, is a step toward dictatorial power.

I know that sounds over the top. I also know that campaign finance proponents believe political money is doing the same thing: that democracy is no longer power to the people, but power to the people with the most money.

Maybe they’re right. If so, then all us other people need to get together and form our own PAC. Ten bucks apiece, and we’ll be the biggest dogs in the room.

Even when we think it’s ugly and negative; even when we think it’s wrong; even when there are mysterious and shadowy people slinking around in the background: free speech is the single biggest check against dictatorial government power. The U.S. Supreme Court just agreed.

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