Am I free to speak?

Well, yes and no. You are guaranteed freedom of speech by the first amendment. Talk to your dog, he may listen. Practically speaking, you must make a million dollar media buy to make yourself heard. Gone are the days of the firebrand journalist who championed and made popular causes that were antithetical to big money or even to big labor.

It should be obvious to all that it takes money to win an election. This places power firmly in the hands of corporations and organizations that have money to give. And, that money is usually given to candidates that make assurances to the donor.

In the perennial struggle to control politicians, this puts the less wealthy at a distinct disadvantage. Some politicians need compromise nothing to get donations, while others, those who try to represent the poor and middle classes have to surrender their constituency to the wolves in order to be in the game at all.

So, as we now have a huge and growing divide between the rich and poor, the interests of the poor are growing less likely to be represented as the divide grows. Yet both rich and poor are citizens. One man, one vote.

This pits the first Amendment against the right to vote. Granted that the right to vote is not explicitly guaranteed for every citizen by the Constitution, but it is implied and therefore has been extended to most through the rulings of the courts. Though for some time now, freedom of speech has been brandished to protect massive political donations that tend to disenfranchise the poor. And the vote, un-abetted by massive inputs of cash, would probably consistently yield results not to the liking of the larger donors to campaigns. That is why people donate, to impact the outcome.

So I put it to you. As we enter the twenty first century, the fight for liberty enters a phase that, while probably not new, should probably be of most concern to the defining minds in government. It is a fight that has languished for two centuries and now the advent of mass media has made it pivotal. The rich can control the message of media and thus access by political campaigns to the public.

In practice, the rich use the media to actively dissuade the poor from hearing of or voting on issues and to corrupt politicians that might serve them by withholding funding necessary to buy media advertising. It would be one thing if the advertising contained a verifiable position statement on an issue or a reasoned argument for a proposal, but it never, or hardly ever does.

The most common advertisement by far is the political campaign ad aimed at evoking some completely irrelevant emotion and co-branding it with a candidate. The second most common, although it may seem more common, is the political attack ad. Pundits rationalize that they are used because they work. The more honest of them acknowledge the way that they work. They work by turning people off to government and making them stay home on election day. Demography shows, when people stay home, it always favors the Republicans. That is why Republicans are always the first to use and to defend the use of attack ads, they are a Republican tool to make the opposition stay home and shut up to boot.

Of course the most grievous casualty of the modern media based campaign is the truth. It is not that truth is never present, it is that it not verifiable, either through cited authority or through reason. The appeal is always to some base instinct coupled with an even baser appeal to trust the candidate. That is all you can get into a thirty second spot. And, this is why our politics is getting dumber and dumber at a time when it could and should be getting smarter and smarter.

It is as if we Americans are regarded by the political parties like the Roman rulers regarded the Proletarians, the citizens of Rome. Give us bread and circuses and we will let you run things. I assure you that despite arguments from the Right to the contrary, this is not what the founders had in mind. Consider the quote from Jefferson that is on the front page of this web site.

"I know of no safe depository for the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." ----- Thomas Jefferson 1820

How does that quote square with the dumbing down of our political discourse?

Clearly the founders could not have foreseen a captive media audience that could be passively conditioned to have Pavlovian responses to questions that should require the full engagement of everyone's best reasoning. Equally clearly, the objective of the political advertisement is to prevent reasoning from happening by providing a shortcut to decisions through the limbic system that requires no effort on the part of the citizen.

Is freedom of speech still defensible as such when it is used to propagandize, condition and disenfranchise voters? If Joseph Gobels had been denied freedom of speech there might not have been a Holocaust. If the radical Imams of Islam had been denied freedom of speech there might not have been a 9/11. It is very tempting to shut up the people you disagree with. But we have entered a period when shutting them up is just a matter of money. I often wonder if the Right understands how much money they waste out of their fear that people will not find their true agenda reasonable.

New York city is going to try to ban the word nigger. The FCC prohibits the use of seven words on broadcast television. Both of these actions are undertaken to prevent ostensible damage to society. But how much damage is done to society by the thirty second political spot? We recognize and generally agree that the use of certain words in certain situations is damaging. Why can we not agree that the political ad is destructive to the process of running this nation?

I propose that the thirty second political ad be banned from the airwaves. Individuals and PACs can donate all the money they want, because signs in yards and full page newspaper ads do not have the same subliminal messaging properties as Madison Avenue style promotional spots. If campaigns want to use TV, let them sponsor documentary style programs on their message. But do not let them pound away at the hind brains of our citizens any longer. Life and the decisions required to conduct ourselves and our government are too critical to be left to the hind brain. Maybe we could wean ourselves off of the sound bite as a decision making tool in the so doing.

So if one, in exercising his right to freedom of speech, obstructs the right of another to freedom of speech, isn't the first violating the Constitutional rights of the second? I don't think the framers of the Constitution meant for the richest kid on the block to be able to keep the others from talking. I kind of think that the intent of the First Amendment is for everyone to have as equal a voice as is possible and if that means curbing the loudest in order for the others to be heard, then so be it. Congress has rules of order, so should street politics.