New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | November 4, 2005

Matt Welch tries to figure out how soi-disant champions of civil liberties can become cheerleaders for censorship—as long as Republicans are against it.

Comments

Gimme Back My Dog|11.4.05 @ 3:51PM|#

I gave several of my "small government Republican" friends the following challenge before this last election: Would they swear that if the Republicans win both houses and the presidency, and the size of the government increases, they would change their registration from Rep to Libertarian. Not a single one agreed to this. When pressed, they admitted that they knew that the Republicans had no plans to reduce the size of government.

People that are committed to one party or another are like religious believers. They will continue to believe in the face of evidence to the contrary.

|11.4.05 @ 3:53PM|#

I don't even know if you could call it "belief". It's identity, sometimes cultural identity, more than anything for a lot of people.

|11.4.05 @ 4:08PM|#

I think Eric has it right. Party choice is more about self-identification (tribalism?) than rationally thought-out positions.

Of course, the same thing holds for political identifications like libertarian.

|11.4.05 @ 4:15PM|#

Party choice is more about self-identification (tribalism?) than rationally thought-out positions.

Ergo, people who self-identify as libertarian are antisocial? Contrarian? Or what?

R C Dean|11.4.05 @ 4:24PM|#

What?

Gimme Back My Dog|11.4.05 @ 4:25PM|#

There is one thing about this vote that confused me. I think we can all-- except for joe-- agree that neither party voted based on principle. The Republicans were in favor and the Democrats against because they believed that the bill would favor Republicans.

But why would they think this? Haven't the Democrats always been more adept at using the internet as a campaigning tool?

|11.4.05 @ 4:29PM|#

Linguist: I prefer the term 'unmutual.'

|11.4.05 @ 4:29PM|#

There is party identification, then there is the recognition that only two coalitions can ever do anything. We are forced to defend our coalitions so that a given policy or two we prefer winds up on the winning team so that it at least has a shot. There is no party of big government, there are just parties of policies lumped together to pool votes. It is not enough to pick a coalition and hold your nose. To actively advance your policy through the coalition, your coalition as a whole must win. So, in the end, everyone looks like a partisan. There are probably quite a few folks who come to believe their own rhetoric about the Party, too.

The corollary is that a small government party will never be effective. The platform is too broad to swallow whole by a major coalition and the number of those ideologically commited to small government over potential effective advancement of given policies is not much bigger than the population that visits this site. it is electorally insignificant.

Rich Ard|11.4.05 @ 4:36PM|#

And the only way to change that is to work on a local level - I think that in general, too many of us throw our hands up in dismay and say "ahh, it's fucked anyway" instead of participating and trying to alter the process from a local venue.

I live in a small, religiously and politically conservative city, and think that any political effort on my part would be futile - I talk a lot, but will admit there's not much "doing" aside from writing letters.

|11.4.05 @ 4:44PM|#

The Democrats are about as much in favor of free speech as The Republicans are in favor of free markets.

|11.4.05 @ 4:45PM|#

"An unbelievable number of Republicans still believe that they are the party of limited government, all evidence notwithstanding."

yeah i am having trouble with this and i am a libertarian...they just seem so sinsere...

Anyway they do seem to want to limit the scope (anti-kelo legislation, ESA reform, etc) but seem to want to completely ignore the actual ballooning size.

|11.4.05 @ 4:46PM|#

Rich Ard- Mark me down for the "It's fucked anyway" option, but with this caveat: it's better just to sit back and enjoy the entertainment. People don't want freedom for themselves, and they can't tolerate it for others. So, the only option for us few is to view the whole thing as high farce.
Sort of like Moliere, but with more tyranny and carnage.

|11.4.05 @ 4:47PM|#

Haven't the Democrats always been more adept at using the internet as a campaigning tool?

I think Howard Dean opened many peoples eyes to the power of the Internet to raise $ for presidential candidates. However, I would argue that conservative and libertarian groups have generally been more adept at using the Internet (and talk radio for that matter) to get out a message and rally supporters. South Park Conservatives talks about this a bit. So, I think the GOP believes they stand to gain more than the Dems.

|11.4.05 @ 4:48PM|#

Oh, by the way, I wanted to pass along an interesting pro-PBS argument I overheard recently. It goes something like this: the government has as much right to have its own medium on which to air its views as anyone else...

|11.4.05 @ 4:51PM|#

the government has as much right to have its own medium on which to air its views as anyone else...

That makes my head hurt...

|11.4.05 @ 4:52PM|#

Jim Walsh,

Well, that's essentially a position the SCOTUS has taken for a long time. Its at the heart of the Rust v. Sullivan in fact. The government can pay for its own speech, and tough shit if you don't like it.

|11.4.05 @ 4:52PM|#

I'm between Number 6's Moliere concept (nice characterization, btw) and a strategy of selecting individual policies I want to advance through the coalitions at play.

Rich Ard: I don't think the problem is fixable through greater involvement in a libertarian party, local or not. The problem is public choice and game theory. In a winner take all election format, the vote against negative policies advocated by one coalition or for a policy or two in the other coalition is always more rationally compelling than the vote for an impossible candidate. The LP is a broken concept.

|11.4.05 @ 4:58PM|#

Jason Ligon,

Yes, that gets to a comment I made on an earlier thread today; the system as it works now leads inherently to the problems we see.

fyodor|11.4.05 @ 5:03PM|#

Okay, time to be contrarian among the contrarians again.

I am in total agreement with the prevailing opinion in these parts that campaign finance is an abridgement of free speech.

But it's about zero surprise that Democrats would oppose this bill, and it has nothing to do with Republicans being for it. (Well, maybe not nothing at all; technically I should say it need not have anything to do with Republicans being for it.)

It is part and parcel of the political philosophy of Democrats/liberals/leftists to think that money is an evil and corrupting force. And since campaign finance is essentially a liberal/leftist issue, why the hell would anyone think that Democrats would want to shield the internet from its effects?

|11.4.05 @ 5:05PM|#

This kind of thing has been going on for years. Tell I liberal sometime that he has Nixon to thank for the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the EEOC, and putting real teeth into civil rights law and watch his head explode. The same thing happens to a smaller degree when you try to tell some Republicans that it was Carter, not Reagan who deregulated the airline and energy industries.

That said, I have always viewed the Democrats as the real enemy of political speech because the Democrats are the party of the main stream media. Who has the most too loose in the internet news revolution? The MSM. Even though many blogs are actually lefty and indeed I am told Kos is the most read blog, the MSM is still threatened by them and are depending on the Dems to do their bidding by squashing political speech. Campaign finance laws are almost Orwellian in their claims to protect the little guy. Its not the little guy who is loosing out with the internet its the big guy. Think about the last election. A major network was completely humiliated and its entire news staff discredited by some geek who happened to know a whole lot about typewriters and fonts. Twenty years ago, no way that happens. The Dan Rather memos would have been accepted as truth. It would have been an urban myth that those documents were forged. It would have been one of those "I have an uncle who has a friend who says that there is no way those memos could have been typed in 1973" kind of things. Without the internet, the information could have never coalesced. That is why the MSM hates the internet and wants to shut it down and get the Dems to do their bidding.

|11.4.05 @ 5:14PM|#

fyodor,

Well, that's what joe told us all day yesterday, remember? It was his sort of "eye the needle" moment. :)

|11.4.05 @ 5:17PM|#

Of course, the same thing holds for political identifications like libertarian.

Maybe if you identity with the LP.

|11.4.05 @ 5:20PM|#

Eric-No, in that case, I meant small-l libertarian. People define themselves by philosophies and ideologies as much as by party labels.

|11.4.05 @ 5:55PM|#

Sure, but there's still an ideological aspect there (as witnessed by some of the stereotypical attacking-the-impure-position stuff) that's different from the "I'm was raised as, identify with, and will always vote for the Republicans/Democrats, no matter what they actually do" behaviors I refer to. Who gets raised libertarian, after all?

|11.4.05 @ 6:14PM|#

I've never met anyone who was raised a libertarian. We're all apostates (I use that term very loosely) in that way.

|11.4.05 @ 6:25PM|#

"You wonder how long it will take for partisans to even notice they have essentially switched sides."

Er, as others have pointed out, the Dems coming down hard against media outlets that their allies don't dominate is nothing new. Matt Welch himself is at least 20 years behind the curve. The Democrat's rhetoric about civil liberties has always had an Orwellian feel to it, at least in my lifetime. GOP attacks on free speech have lately been more on preventing offensive, or obscene speech, while the Dems have been more about ideological content.

|11.4.05 @ 6:42PM|#

I keep advocating a more than two party system, but now I'm beginning to wonder. What if we had no real political parties and just voted on issues (laws, taxes, government actions, etc.). I think the real reason we're stuck with a two party system that's dysfunctional but necessary is because the American electorate has grown more and more apathetic for a variety of reasons. We're willing to take the bad with the good too often and without enough say in what's "bad" and what's "good".

It truly seems that the Democrats and Republicans are more interested in taking each other down than they are in serving the people of the USA. I believe there are more genuine Republicans than Democrats, but each side has their good and bad apples. The problem is all the bad apples get to call the shots. Its like our government has become one big episode of "The Jerry Springer Show". The people who are actually trying to work for the citizens of this country get overshadowed by the people who are just interested in promoting their selfish political causes and stirring up shit.

I hate to sound ridiculous, but if they're so useless and harmful why do we need political parties anyway? Is our reliance on them just a side effect of something else? Why can't we get rid of them, or at least sideline their influence? If we can't do that because this is "the will of the people" then this truly is nothing more than tribalism.

|11.4.05 @ 6:54PM|#

Semi OT: Who gets raised libertarian? My dear old friend from high school, that's who (b. 1973). I first learned about libertarianism, and possibly Reason, from her econ-prof dad. (His license plates read FRE MKTS and LFLIBPH, the latter short for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". I know, state-issued = irony.) I think she's adhering to it for the most part (she's certainly not religious).

|11.4.05 @ 8:26PM|#

Question: would this bill have exempted the internet from FCC regulation as well?

|11.4.05 @ 8:38PM|#

People aren't rasied libertarian in the sense that someone is pushing libertarianism on them, getting told that their views should be libertarian etc...

Rather people are raised libertarian when they are raised to be mistrustful of authority, or that capitilism isn't half as bad as people make it out to be, or that alot of laws are pretty shite.

My parents never raised me to be anything, I just ended up being libertarian/athiest/independently motivated by myself.

Rich Ard|11.4.05 @ 10:07PM|#

Seconded! I was raised in a rational anarchist house, but not groomed as one. Books (and guns, for that matter) were around if we wanted to use them, but we didn't have a reading list.

Jason Ligon: I don't mean resurrecting a system with more than two parties - I agree that's pretty much a pipe dream at this point. But seeds can be planted, and damn if the next few years don't look like plenty of bullshit to help them grow.

TallDave|11.4.05 @ 10:50PM|#

I would vote for the Dems if they would make some semblance of a libertarian platform.

I don't understand it, they seem to go out of their way to spit on libertarians. As the minority party trying to return to the majority, shouldn't they be wooing libertarians?

|11.4.05 @ 11:47PM|#

Ergo, people who self-identify as libertarian are antisocial? Contrarian? Or what?

I get accused of all those things for being libertarian. The "or what" covers anything about me that people don't like.

Jason,

The corollary is that a small government party will never be effective.

Yes. The impetus for small gov't has to come from beyond the party. It's the same problem the deists had in the 19th century. You don't find many deists around these days.

mattc,

I keep advocating a more than two party system, but now I'm beginning to wonder.

Keep wondering. The only potential benefit I've seen from multi-party systems is that sometimes, they slow down the march of statism. But only sometimes, and there are offsetting draw backs.

I have long argued that the root of the problem is democracy itself. Democracy -- or even the republicanism that the US theoretically is/was -- is inherently problematic.

What exactly does democracy mean? Does it mean that everybody gets to vote for anybody they want to? Hmmm.....

You don't have to follow this line of questioning very much further before the whole concept of democracy begins to implode.

|11.4.05 @ 11:56PM|#

Way to fall for a publicity stunt. This bill wasn't meant to pass, it was meant to give Republicans something to campaign on next year.

|11.5.05 @ 12:11AM|#

mattc,

The people who are actually trying to work for the citizens of this country get overshadowed by the people who are just interested in promoting their selfish political causes and stirring up shit.

The same forces that inspired people to first orginize themselves, and create civilization to begin with, have always acted later to tear civilization apart.

In the beginning, King Zog wants power. In a barbarian wasteland, Zog can be the impetus behind the first kingdom. Later others catch on to the idea so there are many many Zogs. In the process of playing King of the Hill they destroy the hill.

What is really in my self interest in this scenerio? To rule, or to be ruled over? To fight, or to yield?

This is where the Chinese would start talking about ying and yang. While there are many gaping holes in Asian philosophy, I've always thought their assesement of the temporal tides of politics was profound.

It's all a matter of balancing the forces at play in society. The problem is that you cannot find The Balance Point, once and for all. Confucianism was a pretty darned good idea in the age of its birth (the age of the Warring Kingdoms). But 1000 years later technology had advanced, the social order had shifted, and Confucian ideology was no longer a good way to politically balance all the forces at play.

Good times come, then go, then come again, the Chinese said.

But that was before Monster Chairman Mao. I will never understand what ever made anybody think that communism is a good idea.

|11.5.05 @ 9:50AM|#

bago,

I've been told that laws are purposely ambiguous and difficult to decipher so that they can be argued about long after they've been implemented. The whole thing sounds like a racket to keep lawyers in business. If laws were easy to understand and capable of seamless integration with everything else why would we need so many lawyers? I would love things to be the way you suggested, however I'm not so sure "the powers that be" would go along with it for the simple fact it doesn't mesh with their philosphy of dominance.

In a simpler time (like 1776) we could run this country without the political crap we see today. In modern times, things aren't so simple. We have more people, more ideas, more technology, more conflicts, and a much, much broader view of the world at large. It seems to me things have evolved the way they have not entirely by design but more as the effect of decades of change. I would love nothing more than to scrap some of the unnecesary bullshit we see in the government today, but I fear doing so would require a violent revolution of some kind. Its my expereince that people in general don't like change. That especially includes people who've grown very comfortable with the status quo.

Kahn,

Good points about the history of politics, if you will. I suppose I feel a little disenchanted that something better hasn't come up after all this time of human civilization. It seems like we just keep repeating the same patterns over and over again.

|11.5.05 @ 11:46AM|#

bago,

Law should really take lessons from IT. There should be an internal framework that absolutely must be consistent for a law to pass. If it can't describe how it inherits the power to affect its actors under the parsing standard, it cannot "compile" and be law.

Interesting idea.

I find it unnerving too. This presupposes that the people who design the compiler baseline "universe" (sorry, I'm not an IT person) have foreseen all possible future needs and problems. This sounds akin to being able to "plan" the economy, which we libertarians know cannot be "planned" because nobody is smart enough to know or foresee all the variables.

One lesson from Chinese history (or anybody else's) is the fact that law has to evolve over time. What you need in place for an agrarian civilization, which China was at the time of Confucious, is entirely different from what you need when you've got an industrial society.

But your idea is still interesting. Get all the smartest people (and don't get into how we're going to define who they are) to define your baseline compiler environment. Then write Government 1.0. When it's clear the old version has become obsolete due to changing circumstances, then you work up and release Government 2.0.

In the meantime, you take care of bug fixes and enhancements with Government 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1, etc.

Sounds good, anyway. :)

|11.5.05 @ 11:57AM|#

bago,

The idea of "compiler consistency" checks on law might very well be a way to evolve the rules of the game with civilization. I wonder how much further people's thinking, and software, have to evolve before attempting this becomes possible.

Of course, definitions of legal intent become at least an order of magnitude more difficult.

But do you realize this would turn lawyers into psuedo-programmers? They're dangerous enough already.....

M1EK|11.5.05 @ 1:49PM|#

"That said, I have always viewed the Democrats as the real enemy of political speech because the Democrats are the party of the main stream media."

Thanks, Rush.

|11.5.05 @ 4:53PM|#

I have always wondered why democrats seem to have a better reputation then republicans when it comes to civil liberties. For example democrats support the war on drugs, music censorship, and have strongly supported restricting political speech. But for some reason the democrats abuse of civil liberties is neither widely recognized nor condemned.

|11.5.05 @ 5:05PM|#

Campaign finance regulations accomplish the one thing they were designed to do very well, they protect incumbent politicians from any real competition.

The combination of gerrymandering and campaign finance regulations make it very difficult for newcomers to compete against an incumbent politician.

|11.5.05 @ 5:21PM|#

TJIT,

Its a faulty meme basically.

Jason Sonenshein|11.5.05 @ 5:38PM|#

I have always wondered why democrats seem to have a better reputation then republicans when it comes to civil liberties. For example democrats support the war on drugs, music censorship, and have strongly supported restricting political speech.

Just this year in the House of Representatives, most Democrats voted for the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Amendment, which would have blocked funding for federal enforcement of drug laws against medical marijuana providers who operate legally under state law. Most Republicans voted against Hinchey-Rohrbacher. Most House Republicans voted for a bill that would expand the "Patriot" Act and make it permanent. Most Democrats voted against this bill. Most Republicans voted for a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to criminalize flag desecration. Most Democrats voted against that amendment.

But for some reason the democrats abuse of civil liberties is neither widely recognized nor condemned.

As a Democrat, I wish my party had a better record on civil liberties. However, it is still generally better than the Republican Party.

|11.5.05 @ 6:02PM|#

Jason Sonenshein,

Most Democrats still support the WoD, whatever Democrats in Congress think about medical marijuana. Indeed, I treat the medical marijuana issue as a completely seperate one from the WoD.

|11.5.05 @ 6:10PM|#

M1EK, The truth hurts. Who besides the MSM benifits from campaign finance laws? Why is it that the Dems are so in love with them?

|11.5.05 @ 6:38PM|#

John,

You hush up now, before thoreau, joe, etc. excommunicate you. No flaming. :)

M1EK|11.5.05 @ 8:04PM|#

"M1EK, The truth hurts. Who besides the MSM benifits from campaign finance laws? Why is it that the Dems are so in love with them?"

Thanks again, Rush.

Viking Moose|11.5.05 @ 9:00PM|#

hi John!

"That said, I have always viewed the Democrats as the real enemy of political speech because the Democrats are the party of the main stream media."

woah. i'd figure we libertarian types spot all sorts of anti libertarian frothing bias, but not some sort of democratic conspiracy.

that's one that this citizen has never gotten, understood, or the like. (i can open up the trib or the sun times and find stories i'd say have some sort of slant, but the direction depends on the pop "prudity" (sic) in question.

but i'd say the dems are in love with such laws now in the minority for certain strategic puroposes. but i tend to agree with fyodor as for many who would self identify as some flavor of liberal would see the "corrupting" nature of "corporate politics".

but then we have john Mccain. he is also in love with the law. not only is he a customer, he bought the company!

cheers,
Viking Moose

|11.5.05 @ 9:20PM|#

M1EK,

The existing mainstream (legacy?) media industry has acted as information gatekeepers for years. Their business controlled the information and generated revenue (advertising) from it. The internet represents a growing competitive threat to the existing news industry. The existing news industry is responding the same way a lot of existing big industries do to new competition. They are using government regulation to try and destroy their new competition.

|11.5.05 @ 9:25PM|#

As a Democrat who has been convinced by libertarian arguments on Campaign Finance Reform, I can at least take comfort in the thought that, unlike Republicans, the people in the grass roots of my party feel no love for most of their representatives in congress.

Having said that, I still respect those who are pushing CFR because I think their motives are pure. During the original fight over the McCain/Feingold bill, I recall reading an article about how Dems were in favor and Repubs were against, even though the bill was supposed to give Repubs the advantage in fund raising. Apparently the two parties were acting on principle and not from any ulterior motives (according to this article, anyway. I think it may have been in the NYT magazine, FWIW.) It's just possible that the Republicans were genuinely motivated by a desire to protect free speech and the Dems were equally motivated by a desire to keep the wealthy from "buying" elections.

|11.5.05 @ 9:47PM|#

M1EK,

By the wit and logic of us libertarians, have you been reduced pithy, meaningless phrases?

Mark Borok,

...because I think their motives are pure.

Boy you could excuse all manner of nightmares with that logic.

|11.5.05 @ 9:48PM|#

Mark Borok,

Or, to be wholly unoriginal, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. :)

|11.6.05 @ 10:38AM|#

Hakluyt:

I'm aware of that. However, there are a lot of people here assuming that the only reason certain politicians are in favor of CFR is because they have something to gain from it. There is a big difference between a politician who is well-intentioned but wrong and one who is corrupt and abuses power.

|11.6.05 @ 11:25AM|#

There is a big difference between a politician who is well-intentioned but wrong and one who is corrupt and abuses power.

No, that is a genetic fallacy.

|11.7.05 @ 11:40AM|#

It would be a genetic fallacy if I was supporting their conclusions.

|11.7.05 @ 12:30PM|#

Say it with me now..........

TERM LIMITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!