Friday, August 26, 2011

Free Speech, No More

We have a problem today with our democratic system. It seems that elections now go to the folks who can scream the loudest and say the most outrageous things, and then of course there is the issue of money. Those with the most money, have the most "Free Speech" and does with less money, they usually lose.

Our constitution provides for free speech, yet to reach millions of people you need millions of dollars. If you do not have millions of dollars, you do not have free speech. Yes It is possible to post a video on YouTube, or hope to get air time from the media, those are usually free (unless you pay for prime spots, key words, search results, etc.). And again we are going back to how money is influencing politics. This of course is a shame, good ideas should be influencing politics not money.

So I have a simple solution. Politicians complain when you try to curb how much money they can raise and spend on a campaign. They usually site an infringement on their free speech rights when you try to prevent how much money they raise, and usually win in court. So I say remove all restrictions on how much money can be raised by politicians. Even remove the personal contribution limit. And create one new law, a law that states that any politician who buys an ad, airs a message, rents a space for a speech, must also buy an equal amount of the same for their opponent to get their message out.

This way people always hear both sides of the message, there is no infringement on free speech, instead there is really some free speech, and people get to choose based on the best idea, not the person who has the most money.

1 comment:

Avino said...

We really need to just make it so politicians have to debate ideas and not just sit in front of friendly audiences and refuse to answer tough questions. This is really disheartening. I want a country in which ideas are debated and the best one wins.

Instead we have a system in which politicians are like cheer leaders that will cheer on an idea even after it has been proven to be ill conceived and not good for the country.

I want a political system of ideas and actions, then if the actions don't work or the ideas are bad, we have an election and try again. The people really need to be the ones to choose. Not the politicians, their job is to act.