Campaign Finance Limits vs. Free Speech Prohibiting citizens from contributing to the candidates of their choice is tantamount to prohibiting them from hiring the lecturers or writers of their choice.
By Andrew Lewis
John McCain, as a former victim of a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, certainly knows the meaning of the deprivation of liberty. Yet he is in the forefront of a battle to undermine a fundamental freedom: the freedom of speech. With loud support from Bill Bradley, President Clinton, and now--more ominously--even the Supreme Court, Sen. McCain is leading the fight to further restrict a citizen's right to contribute to the campaign of his choice.
Political contributions are inherently a mode of speech--more clearly so than many of the forms of "symbolic speech," such as nude dancing and the filing of lawsuits, that have previously been protected--because they explicitly entail the expression of ideas. Your contribution to a candidate is de facto the publication of your ideas. Giving money to a campaign is no different from hiring a speaker or commissioning an author. You are using your money to have your viewpoints presented. The only proper "limits" are those set by your willingness to employ your money for this purpose. But a legislated limit restricts in principle what you can say by restricting how much you can say.
The most radical proposals to restrict campaign contributions call for publicly funded elections which supposedly would "level the playing field" for all candidates. In fact, such plans would result in the moral obscenity of using taxpayers' funds to support ideas with which they disagree.
Further, public funding is a recipe for political orthodoxy. Is it conceivable that government would disburse money to "politically incorrect" views? In order to qualify for the funds, candidates would ultimately have to subject themselves to ideological screening.
Heinous as these consequences are, publicly funded elections would at least allow for some privately funded dissent. Even that island of freedom, however, is now being threatened. In the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold Missouri's limits on campaign contributions, Justice John Paul Stevens writes: "Money is property; it is not speech"--implying that the government may do anything to restrict its use. This idea, if enacted, would destroy our freedom of speech.
Consider flag-burning, a reprehensible action to be sure, but one that has been traditionally and rightly protected as an act of self-expression. Legally, you may burn your flag, but only if it is your property. (To burn someone else's flag is a criminal act of vandalism.) By Justice Stevens's standard, however, burning your own flag is not protected by the First Amendment; to paraphrase: "The flag is property; it is not speech."
Or consider the production of a movie with a political theme, such as anti-communism or anti-capitalism. According to the Stevens principle, the funding for these movies--indeed, all movies--could legally be subject to government restriction, since a viewpoint is being disseminated by means of money. Clearly, no ideas are safe if the government controls our property.
The right to speak cannot be implemented without the right to property. The right to acquire and dispose of your property makes it possible for you to express your ideas, be it by advertising on the op-ed page, hiring a hall in which to deliver a lecture, supporting a candidate with whom you agree, or, more important, criticizing one with whom you disagree. The right to use his property is the only protection a private citizen has against a government monopoly on ideas (and on government control over every aspect of life--as any totalitarian state demonstrates).
The alleged goal of campaign finance limits is to end corruption--or even the appearance of it--in the political processes. But the cause of this problem is the vast power that politicians have to impose punishments, or rewards, on companies. The "special interests" contribute to candidates (often on both sides of an election) in order to escape some new controls or to appeal for legislative favors. But the corruption lies in the arbitrary power we give to our politicians, not in the fact that the victims or beneficiaries of that power try to influence its exercise. Drastically reducing government's power will simultaneously reduce the attempts to make use of that power.
Limiting campaign financing will not solve this problem; it will, however, destroy a principle vital to our republic. It is money--property--that makes freedom of speech possible. Unfortunately, if Senator McCain succeeds in further restricting the individual's right to contribute to political campaigns, he will be moving America in the direction of regimes like that of his former captors.
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