So: a non-profit puts out a documentary critical of a presidential candidate. The government tries to stop it. It’s a no-brainer that what the government is doing is wrong, right? Well, that’s what the Supreme Court thought, but I’m dismayed to see a couple of my favorite bloggers disagreeing: Vjack said that this decision makes the Supreme Court the obvious choice for his “idiot of the week” award, and Massimo Pigliucci has concurred, using what have become the standard talking points on this issue for a lot of liberals: groups aren’t people and money isn’t speech.
I strongly recommend reading Will Wilkinson, Timothy Lee, Matt Welch, and most of all Glen Greenwald on this issue (hat tip on Greenwald goes to Andrew Sullivan). A number of people have pointed out that liberals don’t actually want to deny freedom of speech to groups–we want the ACLU to be able to engage in advocacy on important issues. But Greenwald makes a good case that the “money isn’t speech” argument is even worse:
Anyone who believes that would have to say that there’s no First Amendment problem with any law that restricts the spending of money for political purposes, such as:“It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent;” or
“It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money advocating Constitutional rights for accused terrorists; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such matters, provided no money is spent”; or
“It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money promoting a candidate not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party; all citizens shall still be free to advocate for such candidates, provided no money is spent.”
Robin Hanson has proposed a status-based explanation which makes it sound like liberals oppose the Supreme Court’s decision because they think they’re too cool to hang out with corporate lawyers. In this case, though, I disagree with Robin–I think this is an example of the much uglier human tendency towards tribalism, towards believing that members of the out-group don’t deserve any moral consideration at all. You see this all the time in right-wing attacks on free speech; it’s distressing to see it coming from liberals. This makes me think that the right to free-speech is even more fragile than I realized.
There is something marginally uncharitable about describing the opponents of the ruling as adopting the position that “groups aren’t people”. The position is that the sort of legal personhood granted to a certain sort of legal grouping of people, namely, the legal personhood bestowed upon corporations, does not include every right guaranteed by the constitution to citizens, and that freedom of speech is included under this heading (putting it in the same category as, for example, the right to vote, rather than the right to own property, etc.).