As a European, it can sometimes be hard to appreciate America's guarantees of free speech, especially as you only really ever hear about the "negative" aspects of it - Citizens United, for example.
But more and more it seems that countries that have nominally vibrant democracies are making certain types of speech criminal - I wonder if there'll be a groundswell of activism to get free speech retroactively enshrined as a right in countries where such a thing never really seemed needed before.
Citizens United often gets brought up when people over here talk about limiting political speech, but one thing I like to remind people is that: 1) Citizens United was about a movie criticizing a Presidential candidate--the exact kind of political speech that should be most protected; 2) the Soliciter General put his foot in his mouth in the most terrible way when he basically admitted that the law would allow book banning.
I also like to point out that in the very next term the Supreme Court struck down California's violent video game law, which was widely lauded by liberals even though had Citizens United gone the other way, Rockstar Games would have no free speech rights to raise in that case.
Free speech really is the real deal here, and I find it upsetting how much flak the Supreme Court has gotten for staying true to their line of decisions. This is a Supreme Court that in the midst of Vietnam protected a protestor who said that if the government ever made him carry a rifle (to go to war), the first person in his sights would be President Johnson.
Re: secret funding of campaigns, it seems to me the real problem isn't that people can freely run political ads. The real problem is $1bn+ corporations. People should be lobbying to get rid of corporate limited liability, which would make it impossible for corporations to get so large and powerful in the first place.
You seem to be getting down-voted. Sorry to see that.
My understanding is that SCOTUS could have OK'ed the particular instance (the film "Hillary") without broadly declaring money == speech and providing cover for PACs and super-PACs to keep their list of contributors secret.
I tried to find some links to backup/illuminate this, but I could not, and I may be wrong in my understanding of the actual details of the ruling.
Regarding corporations: My problem is not their size, but that money yields such political influence.
I loath the idea of limiting speech (modulo falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc.) but when I read that the best predictor of election outcomes is looking at who spent the most money, I despair.
The best way I can come to terms with one possible solution is to consider that accepting democracy means you're already accepting assorted restrictions on your behavior. The idea of having to make your donors public in political speech, while distasteful, seems a reasonable way to help combat (or reduce) the influence of big money.
Given the nature of mass media and how people get information it's hard to have a properly functioning democracy when people are bombarded with propaganda, and attempts to counter that propaganda (even with other propaganda) require vast finances.
At the very least let people spend as much as they want on political ads but make the source of that money is public.
A commercial or advertisement is defined as something that "poses nothing more than a commercial transaction." E.g. "Buy this iPad it's great!"
There is no way to shoe-horn "Hilary: The Movie" into the "just a commercial" mold. Here are a list of other movies produced by Citizens United: "ACLU: At War with America" (this one is ironic); "Broken Promises: The UN at 60"; "Rediscovering God in America." Now, you might not like the organization's political message, but I don't see a principled way to distinguish them from some of my Sierra Club favorites like "Coal Country" and "Oil on Ice."
What is "paid speech" even supposed to mean? What movies don't cost money to make? Or for that matter books or pamphlets or newspapers? Both Citizens United and the Sierra Club are not-for-profit corporations. They are created for the express purpose of getting out a particular message, and that costs money. Their message should not be taken out of the protection of the First Amendment just because of that fact.
It should be noted that Grand Theft Auto not only cost money, but it was a for-profit product...
The right to anonymous speech is something we hold pretty dear here in the US. It goes back all the way to the anonymous publishing of the Federalist Papers.
In the case of corporate sponsored speech? You bet I do. And "truth" isn't the problem so much as bias. You can state the exact same true fact 50 different ways and spin it to mean almost anything you want.
Commercial speech has to do with the content of the speech, not the motivations behind speaking.
If I have a statement: "hats are on sale 50% off tomorrow" that is commercial speech. I can tell on it's face that it's commercial, without knowing anything about who spoke it.
If I have a statement: "Hilary Clinton is a terrible candidate for such and such reasons" that is not commercial speech. It does not, on it's face, propose a commercial transaction. Now, someone might have commercial reasons for disliking Hilary Clinton, but the motivation behind speech is irrelevant to whether it is considered to be within the "commercial speech" exception.
This is why music, movies, and video games are all fully protected despite the fact that they are for-profit commerical products. It's the content of the speech, not the motivations for speaking that define speech as commercial or not.
> As a European, it can sometimes be hard to appreciate America's guarantees of free speech
As a European, it's hard NOT to appreciate America's guarantees of free speech, especially as limits on it only seem to have negative effects like silencing criticism of government and powerful public figures, quelling reports of corruption, and penalising beliefs unpopular among current political elite.
Their guarantees include not just the fifth amendment but also little bits like truth being an absolute defence against libel, and courts unwilling to chase the smallest slip-ups in their race to convict for libel. And as much as American seem to get offended over what other people say, their government is not imprisoning historians telling wacky stories, or chasing memorabilia.
I don't know if there's a groundswell, but people in the UK are certainly talking about it.
In particular the libel laws here are utterly crazy, frequently you'll see two Americans, or two Russians, suing each other in UK courts over things printed or put up on the internet in their respective countries. Nothing to do with the UK really, but because there is no 1st amendment, and the courts consider it their jurisdiction if the material was ever available over here, they go for it.
And because most countries have agreements on collecting money owed due to lawsuits, a judgement in the UK (where it's easy to get one) can affect the defendant wherever they are. I believe that this sort of things is starting to be recognised and the US (possibly Obama himself) have put an exception on their legal reciprocity - UK libel judgements don't count in the US any more.
Of course, it's easy to appreciate free speech when it is done by people you sympathize with. It's much harder to do it in case where it's done by people you disagree with. That's why US has First Amendment and that's why, so far, the Supreme Court was very reluctant to allow any restrictions, even in case where political pressure is massive - such as the CU case. Unfortunately, the executive branch is not as adamant in protecting the Constitution as the SCOTUS are - see the recent case of Hillary Clinton promising to arrest and prosecute the maker of the infamous "Innocence of Muslims" flick.
It is by now a demonstrable fact that free speech restrictions are a slippery slope. You start with the laws that prohibit "bad" speech or political speech by "bad" people - and voila, in short time you get bloggers arrested and filmmakers jailed because somebody powerful didn't like what they said. The law is always written against "bad" people, but whoever gets to enforce it may have very different definitions of "bad" than you do.
Strongly agree. The fact that in most European countries, there's some freedom of speech, apparently makes it much easier for legislators to add some things to the taboo list here and there, and for the public to suck it up. In the US, where freedom of speech is a much more absolute right, it is also much easier to defend.
But more and more it seems that countries that have nominally vibrant democracies are making certain types of speech criminal - I wonder if there'll be a groundswell of activism to get free speech retroactively enshrined as a right in countries where such a thing never really seemed needed before.