[EL] ELB News and Commentary 12/20/11

[Paul Lehto]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Volokh, Eugene <VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu> wrote:

>  [...] I see no basis for using this odd supposed analogy to private
> association rights as a justification for suppressing the speech of
> nonmedia business corporations and unions.
>

Say no more, if you truly find it "odd" to imagine We the People as *really
existing* as a form of super-association (But how else, then, would you
describe the sovereign source of all the power delegated from time to time
via elections to our elected representatives?)

It is undoubtedly true that sovereign monarchs can control how long a given
speaker speaks, and whether or not one person can drown out all the others
by purchasing all the available (media) time.

So, how is it that the sovereign We the People, who stepped into the shoes
of the monarchs around 1776,  are powerless to put any restriction at all
on who can speak and for how long, when other sovereigns surely can?   This
makes sense only if elections are purely theatrical distractions, but it
seems they are far more serious than that.

Buying media time in elections is the substantial equivalent of addressing
the kings and queens of this country.  No natural person should be unheard
- they are all part of the governed whose consent is necessary.  But it
does not follow that natural persons, already heard as they are in their
natural capacity, can freely put on corporate masks in combination with
others and then claim the additional right to speak in unlimited,
unregulable fashion to We the People precisely when we are acting in our
sovereign capacity in connection with elections.

Sure, government must be the servant of the People, not its master, telling
them what to say or think.  * But it is a very poor servant indeed who
allows chaos to reign as the controlling principle*, or who doesn't act to
insure that the People can hear from various perspectives so they can be
fully informed.

Any decent corporate advisor would give the corporation's CEO a balanced
presentation of information.   Why, then, are We the People powerless to
have any balance in the presentation whatsoever?  The goal of not having
the government become the Master animates the First Amendment, but *the
government is also a very poor servant* if it is powerless to create or
preserve the basic prerequisites, even in minimal form, for an orderly
debate and presentation of ideas to the People.  First Amendment doctrines
have been -- out an appropriate fear of not having government be the *Master
*-- distorted so that government can not be the *Servant* of the People
either.

You have said that entities can control the speech of their subordinate
entities.  *Is not everything subordinate to We the People, if this is a
democratic republic? * Then why can't there be any control of speech by the
supreme entity, We the People?

Yet, you say that in elections, when we are acting as co-equal sovereigns
in voting, We are powerless to impose any restrictions on who may speak, no
matter how reasonable or limited.  Such a  principle, applied to any other
organization, would result in chaos and destruction. (imagine everyone
having a right to address a corporate CEO or board for as long as their
money allows, regardless of whether they are a shareholder or not. Worse
than a circus, because even a circus has some order to it.)

Paul Lehto, J.D.

Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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