If you were taxed 100 percent of your income, you would effectively be a slave. I am glad you have some glimmering of this idea, at least. If you could trouble yourself to control your anger and self-righteous indignation and think, perhaps…..

Due to our inability to agree, we protect political speech by putting up with some indecency. Otherwise, we would be fining you or sending you to jail.

Money = speech, and these new campaign finance laws directly target that relationship. The explicit intent of these laws is to restrict the ability of some people to spread their own political message. Otherwise, why restrict the money.

But I guess they ruled that the campaign finance law was constitution, too.

You might argue that the same sentiments can be gotten across without the “fucking” and “bitch” (I’d disagree, but for the purposes of this argument, I’ll set that aside). What you’d essentially be arguing for, though, is a time/place/manner restriction on political speech. Which is very much what the campaign finance laws could be characterized as.

In any event, to get anywhere with the argument, you’ve got a pretty difficult burden to carry in arguing that money = speech. If you think you’ve got a way to cinch that, well, you just might have a way to shut down taxes, regulatory fees, heck . . . pretty much everything.

(And fwiw, your hypocrisy has absolutely no bearing on any I might have, thanks.)

Reading your last post, I’m not even sure where you stand here.

What did the writers of the Constitution mean by freedom of speech. Given the context of the amendment (The Constitution is a political document.), I think it is safe to say the writers were concerned about the rights of people to participate in the political process. Specifically, they did not want the Federal Government to stop the People from involving themselves in the election of their leaders.

Now on occasion I might want some individual restrained from engaging in behavior and speech that interferes with the rights of others. Such behavior or speech could be criminal just extremely rude. It might be juvenile or attributable to mental illness. Whatever it is, such behavior has nothing to do with politics or religion.

Because I do not think all speech is protected by the first amendment, I suppose you think that makes me a hypocrite. So if I can be a hypocrite, I guess you think it is OK for you to be a hypocrite. It is OK to ignore the Constitution and restrict what is clearly political speech protected by the Constitution. Is that sum of your argument?

That said, because we each have a beast within us, every society in history has enforced certain standards of behavior and dress. If some stranger walked up to my wife and started calling her names and exposing himself, I do not think his right to free speech would be a relevant. Even if this rude fellow was running for political office, I am certain I would not need to call the FEC to make him stop.

There is a clear difference between the political speech protected by the Constitution and indecent behavior, but lawyers can be quite skillful in confusing matters. So to protect political speech, we put up with some indecent behavior. Nonetheless, I fail to see what this FEC ruling has to do with any of that. So have at it, and while you are at it, would you like to address whether the law is constitutional?

(Yes, it’s related, and I promise at least one follow up)

The primary purpose of any government regulation should be to ensure open and honest behavior. The public interest is served when we know who contributes to whom. Limiting campaign contributions, however, stifles competition. That only serves the interests of incumbents.

What I learned is that free speech only applies to flag burning and pornography. Political speech is tightly controlled.

Somehow, I don’t think that was the point of the first amendment