November 04, 2008
It's Official: Jawa Report = Porn
Your moral superior in Congress, Chuck Schumer:
The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.AllahP has the video up.
As a non-lawyer, let me give two responses. The first response is terse: this is the kind of stupid statement I've come to expect from lawyers.
Second, a longer reply. It's the kind of stupid statement lawyers make precisely because they're taught to think about "the law" and not the Constitution.
The First Amendment was created to protect political speech. Pornography is not political speech.
Why does the First Amendment protect political speech? Because it's kind of hard to run a democracy without the ability to criticize politicians or political ideas.
Suppressing political speech is, by definition, impossible to do in a democracy. Once you have suppressed political speech you no longer are in a democracy.
However one might not like it (I'm looking at you Ragnar, Vinnie, and Howie) it is possible to limit pornography and still have a fully functional democracy.
So, the analogy is stupid. The problem with regulating pornography is one of implementation: who decides what is pornographic? The problem with the fairness doctrine is foundational: can a democracy function when government agents decide what political speech and what amount of time spent on that speech is acceptable?
By Rusty at November 4, 2008 12:55 PM | | l digg this
