McCain’s War on Liberty

Yaron Brook has written the single best critique of campaign censorship (for that’s what it is) that I’ve read. Writing for Forbes, Brook argues that laws such as McCain-Feingold “subject political speech to the corrupting influence of government control.”

Brook explains why campaign censorship is harmful; why it shuts out true outsider candidates. But what Brook brings home especially powerfully is the end-game of campaign censorship: campaigns funded — and thus controlled — exclusively by the political powerful:

[C]ampaign finance advocates have not been appeased by McCain-Feingold, and are calling for complete public financing of political elections. Under such a system, candidates would no longer have to financially earn the platform from which they speak; instead, the government would furnish candidates with your tax dollars. Of course, not every potential candidate could receive public funding under such a system: Only “serious” candidates would.

Who decides which candidate is serious? Those presently holding government power. There is no surer way to create a political aristocracy in America.

John McCain betrayed our First Amendment liberties. He should immediately and strongly advocate legislation to repeal his abominable law. I imagine that will happen around the same time that Barack Obama endorses liberty in medicine.