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Presidential Hopeful.

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conan

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(Just to play the Devil's advocate...)

Is that really any worse than some of the awful rights-abridging things that every other politician (including president Bush) also sponsors?

Yes!

Freedom of speech is essential to the spread of rational ideas. That is why, back in 1962, Ayn Rand wrote that the two most important political issues were the FCC and the anti-trust laws -- in that order.

Since then, the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine" which restricted political speech on TV and radio has been eliminated (by the Reagan administration) and we have seen the growth of right-wing talk radio and alternative news coverage and commentary on FoxNews. (You younger people may not appreciate the monopoly the Liberal Establishment once had, how one-sided news and commentary used to be, and how hard it was for us to be heard.)

"Campaign finance reform" restricts political speech and is an abomination and a real and fundamental threat.

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Betsy is right, as usual.

Campaign finance reform and other restrictions on speech are among the few methods by which politicians can directly take a hold on your and everybody else's mind. In other parts of the world, the appropriate term is mass brainwashing.

It is the claim that neither you nor anybody else has the right to think. The collectivist premise that neither you nor anybody else has the capability to think follows immediately.

The case for welfare is not quite as dangerous: the claim is you have some duties. That claim can only follow logically from the collectivist premise; but the move from welfare state sans logical premises to hell is not immediate, and reason can stop it in its tracks.

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