I was reading an op-ed piece in the Economist (article) earlier this morning. I went online a little later and perused through the banter of the posted comments attached to the online version of the story. Mostly the comments seemed like an overly hostile not-quite-on-topic argument between conservatives and liberals with a lot of baiting and name calling. I decided that instead of posting my comments there among the discord and rabble, I would keep my comments on my own blog where I could control the comments. See while I believe in free speech (mine, yours, everyone’s) I am not the government and I am not bound by the first amendment when it comes to restricting comments posted on my blog. And this is the point I think is being missed.
If you post a comment here, I do not have to approve it. (I probably will but you cannot make me.) Nor however, can I prevent you or anyone from starting your own blog or posting other comments somewhere else online that disagree with me. This then is the point of free speech and why I have come to believe that there are few good reasons to attempt to limit it and almost never a good reason when the discourse is civil. Yes, it is ironic that the best weapon against the freedom speech is the freedom of speech.
I think I need to express at this point one of the things that has begun to frustrate me about the attitudes in this country that ties directly to the question of free speech. There is increasingly an attitude that we have a right to not be offended by those around us. That we in some way have the right to curtail the activities or rights of others simply because we become “offended” by what they say or stand for. Now I am not advocating that harassment or bigotry should be tolerated. No, no one should be subject to these. However if you are in an environment of your own free will. (i.e. not compelled by legal or financial necessity), you do not have the right to not be offended. You have the right to remove yourself from the situation, you have the right to complain. You do not have the right to curtail the offender’s actions or speech (unless there is danger involved, i.e. shouting fire in a theater or starting a riot) In fact this thought process is completely upside down. You do have the right to be offended…. but your recourse is limited to your ability to speak out against those that offend you, not by stopping those that offend from speaking. You do not have the right to not hear opinions that you do not agree with.
This then ties to a central part of discussion that I decided to mostly avoid. (Although in retrospect I might post some of this.) That part of the discussion is the role of corporations in the public discourse, political or otherwise. First let us clarify a few things. Corporations are not people but ultimately are owned by people. Corporations are not democracies. Corporations are a form of plutocracy, in the corporation those with the most wealth (stock) have the most power (votes). There is nothing inherently wrong with this concept. We only get into trouble when we start to think of corporations as democratic, they are not. The urge to restrict corporations from public discourse arises from the fact that in our society many corporations hold a great amounts of wealth and with that wealth comes the potential for turning our society as a whole into a plutocracy. (Or for the Marxists out there… more of a plutocracy that it already is.) This reaction is primarily a fear based response that shows a lack of respect for the electorate. However, this fear is not entirely unfounded as on the whole we tend to greatly ascribe to the theory of rational ignorance when voting. The more a name or image is put before us in a positive light, the more we are likely to support it or the individual, even if upon closer inspection the underling positions are diametricly opposed to our own views.
The inherit problem is not that a given voice is too influential, but that not enough voices are being heard and those that are being heard are unaccountable. Perhaps instead of trying to curtail the political speech of corporations, we should be holding corporations responsible for the political speech they do carry out and trying to increasing the political speech of everyday individuals. If we remove caps on political speech from corporations but require them to endorse political advertisements the same way candidates do, we the consumer could hold corporations responsible for the positions they take. No one would fault a beer company for opposing a tax on alcohol, however a pro-life or pro-choice ad by that same company might offend people enough to stop buying that given product. The net result is that corporations would begin to perform a sort of self censorship and would not involved themselves in public discourse that does not directly relate to their business. In addition to this ‘branding’ of political opinions, we could increase the number of voices being heard by putting a tax on political speech by corporations and distributing this money to those with differing opinions. (Not necessarily opposite just different.) Corporations would be allowed to support any political position they like but would have to contribute to this fund that would be available to just about anyone. (Any individual that is.) Now I do not know the details of how that would work (if it would work) or how it would be allocated. That is a discussion for wiser men than I. The point I am trying to make is that the problem may not be the one that was originally postulated and the solutions may not be clear and as obvious as may first appear. It may be necessary to come up with new ideas.
I will skip for now the inequalities when speaking of the fourth estate because I believe for the most part the power of the news media is waning. However it is ironic that being mostly corporations many are heavily biased one way or the other (FOX News, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. etc.) However they are mostly exempt from rules that other corporations must follow regarding political speech.
