We are a nation governed by laws. There are many smart folks serving as lawyers that make sure of that. Any societal trend or established phenomenon ultimately is allowed by law, if not outright encouraged or required. There are deregulation laws responsible for the media consolidation that has occurred since the seventies. This has centralized the supply of information and by definition decreased the liberty to the freedom of thought in support of a wise democracy.
Yet centralized information can still be “good” information, focusing on factual events rather than opinions or distortions of events. Turning corporate media news into the current steady stream of “bad” information we witness now required a different legal foundation. In their Buckley v. Valeo (1976) decision the Supreme Court struck down limits to campaign expenditures with the assertion that money is an expression of free speech. Sitting on the court at the time was Justice Lewis Powell, author of the Powell Memorandum which in turn initiated the Powell Cabal. The decision was per curiam, which means that no individual justice took responsibility for explaining it, but we can imagine Powell’s support and thoughts on the matter.
Money is needed to distort and/or obscure information. As a general principle, the greater the discrepancy from the truth needed the greater the expense required to dress it up. Money is therefore the means of false speech. To simultaneously equate money with free speech in turn legally justifies false speech, and there are to be no limits as to how much false speech can be allowed, as long as the false speech falls within some minimal guidelines.
Granted, money also is needed to combat distorted and/or obscure information put out by the opposition. When corporations or the Powell Cabal forms the opposition, their far greater ability to pay for false speech usually spells defeat for their targets. That is one reason why you do not hear candidates taking on business corporations to the detailed extent that they need to be confronted. Instead, candidates spend huge amounts of money either providing distorted information about an opponent, or overcoming the distorted information generated by the opponent.
Buckley v. Valeo degraded political elections by increasing further the amount of dishonesty and distortion, increasing the amount of incivility, increasing the indebtedness of candidates to wealth (particulalry from corporations and special interest groups), and reducing citizens to the children of a paternal democracy. The latter charge warrants some further explanation. When candidates need to spend so much on personal promotion, defense and/or attacks in pithy sound bites for corporate media entertainment, er, news, citizens are left out of the equation. Oh, candidates will tell us how much they will do for us but it requires a different news medium, a different campaign emphasis, for straight talk about what we need to do for ourselves. Candidates become like prospective parents rather than leaders of a wise democracy that requires actions on the parts of citizens to get the country headed in the right direction.
In my view Buckley v. Valeo is in the same category as Dred Scott and Lochner v. New York, Supreme Court decisions that eventually led to catastrophy for the nation. We’ve had our Civil War; we’ve had our Great Depression. I believe I could link almost every bad thing done by government over the past thirty years, with a corporate stamp, as at least an indirect consequence of Buckley v. Valeo.
It would be tempting to place all the blame on the candidates, or the corporations, or the Supreme Court in this matter. That will get us nowhere. That triumvirate will not be overturning Buckley v. Valeo anytime soon, or overturning deregulation laws, or looking to police themselves in regards to campaign spending. Only citizens interested in wise democracy have the motivation to do what needs to be done on our parts, and that is mainly to ignore corporate media news.
Talk to people in communal groups that have different points of view. Conversely, don’t discuss politics in special interest groups (especially political parties) that seek mainly to conform your point of view. The time has come for us to stop taking on the role of children in a paternal democracy, conforming our opinions to “parental leaders” and dependent on our favorite political party. We need to take some initiative in nourishing our own individual freedom of thought.
Tags: Corporate Media, Middle Class Politics, Political Misinformation
