Weaken the law and invite chaos

You would think that a decision to curtail first amendment rights would send the press into a fit of indignation. Instead, the papers today are downright giddy about the Supreme Court decision to uphold the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The consensus seems to be that political corruption is so rampant and detrimental to the American political body that any measure to slay this monster is welcome. The NY Times ran an editorial today titled “A campaign finance triumph” and blithely noted: “Given the choice of seeing the law as a restriction on speech or as a needed corrective to corruption in politics, the court came down firmly on the side of considering it a corrective.” The Washington Post believes that the ruling affirms “that the Constitution does not require a broken democracy in which the government is impotent in the face of a culture of influence peddling.”

“Broken democracy”??? America sits astride the world, the most dominant economic and military force in the history of the planet. This country is a paradise of opportunity and a destination for thousands of immigrants seeking a better life in a nation built on rights and laws. But now, for the first time ever, our lawmakers have decided that we can withstand a little less freedom to proscribe, in the Court’s words, “the ill effects of aggregated wealth on our political system.”

Our legislators, President, and Supreme Court justices would have benefited from reviewing this dialogue from “A Man for All Seasons” before this crusade to destroy the Devil of “corruption”:

In his aptly-entitled play A Man for All Seasons, playwright Robert Bolt dramatizes a conversation between the impertinent William Roper and the discerning Thomas More. Roper, exasperated with the unwavering commitment of More to the rule of law, asks: "So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law?"

More responds:"Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"

Roper, with all the sincerity of our own contemporary zealots of both the right and the left, retorts by exclaiming:"I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"

More replies: "Oh! And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat! This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."