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Discussion Membership
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Political speech: Regulation versus inoculation
Rippling consequences of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation have brought "Be careful of what you wish for" back from trite cliché to terrifying truth. Commanded by the courts, a reluctant Federal Election Commission (FEC), has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking governing activity on the internet to apply the legislation to the web. The draft regulations [47 page PDF of proposed rules] so narrowly define permissible blogging that if you don't own your computer, and you don't own your internet connection, congratulations, your political speech is regulated. Clearly, more government is not the answer to everything. The regulations seem guaranteed to be ineffectual, because a blog that might be covered under the FEC proposed regulations, moved to a host outside the territorial boundaries of the United States, would seem to be free from FEC jurisdiction. And if that weren't enough, individuals outside the United States have offered to post emails from Americans on websites. Imagine the FEC censoring emails from Americans to foreign citizens. In other words, it would appear either the FEC is bound to be ineffective or bloggers will be bound to support surreptitious blogging. The lesson of McCain-Feingold is that heavy-handed regulation will not work. Besides, the supercilious nature of those who favor oppressive campaign finance legislation is distasteful. Their legislation implies that while they are smart enough to identify and discount candidate promotions, you, for some reason, are not. The solution is simple. Promote, instead, freedom and transparency. Then inoculate citizens to think for themselves. Remove the restrictions on political contributions, but record each contribution in an easy to read, public place -- like in a database on the internet. Then inoculate people -- educate them -- to look for who's paying for what and why.
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