From Mark Tapscott, an excerpt of Maverick lawmaker and serial Republican presidential hopeful John McCain’s appearance on The Don Imus show, where the Arizona Senator relegates the First Amendment to what he fancies is its proper place:
He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform….I know that money corrupts….I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.â€Â
[my emphasis]
What can I say? The guy’s a control freak.
To McCain’s way of thinking, the old white dudes who wrote the First Amendment simply didn’t consider that by granting free speech to just anybody, they were creating the conditions for people not as earnest as the Arizona Repubican to assert their rights to use it. Which, let’s face it: that just makes the proles difficult to shepherd. And what strong and wise leader of men needs that headache, right?
Notes Captain Ed:
Senator McCain apparently has no love for the First Amendment, nor any understanding of why it occupies the primary position in the Bill of Rights. The right to free speech recognizes the inherent and natural right to speak one’s mind and to argue for one’s political beliefs. Free speech costs nothing and it requires nothing other than a lack of government interference. The right to speak out informs all of the other natural rights recognized in the Constitution; without it, none of the others make sense, including the right to religious expression, property rights, the right to bear arms. None of these make sense if the government can control your political speech and determine about what its citizens can protest and when they can do it.
Furthermore, the entire reason the founders saw fit to recognize this natural right in the primary position was to guard against corruption and totalitarianism in the federal government. They had just broken free of a particularly ill-tempered monarch who actively sought to oppress dissent regarding British policies in the colonies. The crafters of the Constitution understood that the only barrier to its new government’s potential for creating another tyranny would be the free and unfettered poltical speech that would point out such corruption and abuse of power.
The founders would have laughed at McCain’s notion that one could trade free political speech for ‘clean’ government. They knew that the only manner in which to keep the government clean was to enable its citizens to speak out against abuses. Trading free speech for any kind of government only enables the villains of power to accumulate and abuse it all the more.
Senator John McCain has many fine qualities, but an understanding of free speech is not among them. He would trade our primary birthright for a mess of bureaucracy and trust it to operate in our interests while limiting our ability to criticize it. That path leads to autocracy, corruption, and ruin.
Indeed.
And from a purely political standpoint, what this means is that for those who’ve defended McCain in the past, they have now been offered a rare and candid glimpse into his benevolent tyrant’s soul—and what has been revealed is going to be difficult to overcome or explain away.
(h/t Stop the ACLU, who has video).
“Campaign Reform” has come to mean “keeping the people I don’t like from influencing politics.”
It was kind of obvious that if we let politicians and lawyers “fix” the system they use to enrich themselves and fulfill their fantasies, we’d get “more of the same.”
Not that I have an answer, other than Don’t Let Them Do It Any More…
Google “McCain-Feingold George Soros” for some good, clean, old-fashioned Conspiracy Theory fun.
That certainly was their intent
I would refer Sen. McCain to B. Franklin
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. “
I have long thought Sen. McCain to be one of the least scrupulous power seekers in Washington. This latest would certainly seem to vindicate that view.
Regards,
Neil
tw: instead Anbody instead of McCain
Good point, Actus,
I hearby arrest you under the Alien and Sedation Act. Have fun for the next couple years……
Actually, I think Actus is right. The Campaign Finance Reform legislation is almost directly analagous to the Alien & Sedition Acts, had much the same impetus behind it, and deserves to go down in history with as the same degree of infamy.
Well done Actus.
Regards,
Neil
Hmmm.
sigh.
actus, the quotation you use includes the requirement that a conviction by a court of law before any penalties for sedition are applied.
oh what’s the use. it’s like pouring sand into a black hole.
I love the “quote First Amendment rights” part of McCain’s comment. Yeah, like people are reading shit into the Constitution.
Oops, they are. Like Kelo and campaign finance reform, and other things. But last I checked you **shouldn’t** needs quotes around what is guaranteed by the 1st amendment.
…and what has been revealed is going to be difficult to overcome or explain away.
From your keyboard to God’s eyes.
er…. by “Sedation Act” I mean um….. er………..
The right to own a Ramones t-shirt?
As for the Alien & Sedition Acts, it wasn’t the fault of the poor Federalists. They were driven to it by the secret campaign finance excesses of Thomas Jefferson who irresponsibly and without accountability secretly funneled money to slanderous newspaper publishers.
Seriously.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were not part of the consitution and God willing at some point either the SCOTUS or the Congress will see the light and scuttle McCain-Feingold.
And BTW it never got much play of course but it has been admitted by a participant that Pew orchestrated a campaign in the media to give the impression that there was a goundswell clamoring for campaign finance reform.
Here in Arizona, McCain has reached the stature previously owned by Jimmy Carter: “Great Man, Unbelieveably Shitty Politician.”
Carter vacated that post when he attained the rank of “History’s Greatest Monster.”
Maverick John McCain for President: “You don’ need no steenkeeng quote First Amendment rights!”
To speak or not to speak… Alas, we’ve known uber-rich John too well and too long here in Arizona. Why only a week or two ago, in answer to a woman in Yuma who asked him what we can do about the ever-growing numbers of “immigrants” using our severely overextended emergency rooms as clinics, he replied that their employers would be required to provide them with health benefits. After moment of stunned silence, the audience laughed [to keep from crying].
I frankly don’t know how he keeps getting re-elected. I thought for sure he was toast after the savings and loan debacle, but apparently we ran out of wooden stakes the next time he came up for re-election and thus handily returned to lying on the job. Anyway, as the true story above illustates, our intellectually recumbent, perpetually incumbent McBane still occasionally, personally robs us of speech with the unbearable lightness of his ignorance, but he much prefers doing so as a matter of policy.
I suggest George Lord Byron’s “Lines Inscribed Upon A Cup Formed from a Skull” to my friends as a fleeting escape from the latest bonfire of McVanities.
Was just watching the early news on channel 9 here in the OC, covering the big demo in LA. Ms. Blowdry was interviewing as the camera panned over the crowd. Big sign, right up front: ”F*CK BUSH!”. The camera guy paused for a few seconds, the picture jerked just a little, the s.l.o.w.l.y panned away.
That free speech, over the airwaves, will doubtless attract the attention of the FCC. Any second now…
Return the federal government to its proper Constitutional size and role, and bullshit like “campaign finance reform” would become the moot issue it so richly deserves to be.
When you say ‘free speech’ you really mean ‘enough money to buy airtime’ right? Isn’t that what we’re really talking about here? Money =’s freedom.
No.
thesupercedar, organizations that have raised money legitimately are having their rights restricted within 60 days of an election. If those organizations have a right to speak at all then isn’t restricting their speech by an arbitrary rule an unconstitutional restriction of political speech? I say yes.
Forest for the trees.
People spend what seems like large amounts of money on campaigns because the payoff is control of exponentially larger sums of money to those who win. Take that money out of the back end by reducing the federal government to 10% of its current size and reducing its role to its three or four actual Constitutional assignments, and I’ll guarantee the “campaign finance” problem solves itself. And not at the expense of the 1st Amendment, either.
Mr. McCain will no doubt next reveal how the secret to having clean government IS NOT BEING ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT!
Want clean government? They’re the PEOPLE’s airwaves, jerk! How about a law making campaign commercial time FREE for both candidates for 120 days before the election, and then keep your greasy, Keating-jerking hands OFF?!
Man, I hadn’t realized that clean government and free speech were mutually exclusive. I learn something new every day.
Turing Word: small, as in, bedebedebedebede, that’s small folks!
That ka-thunk you just heard was the door slamming on McCain’s presidential run. Better hope Rudy keeps his prostate clean for the next two years.
When John McQueeg came up the McCain-Feingold “Incumbent Protection Act” that is when I vowed I would never support or vote for that thin-skinned, nixonian twerp. Ever. Even if it means President Hillary.
I will STAY HOME at election time.
Actually, that Franklin quote is a bit inaccurate. I’ve seen it used many times without the words “little” to oppose things like the patriot act. Here is the correct quote:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.