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

[Paul Lehto]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Soren Dayton <soren.dayton at gmail.com>wrote:

> So do you believe that, say, members of congress act in the government as
> servant model or government as master model?
>
> This seems a peculiar time to praise and defend the angels
>

I'm not praising and defending.  They are more often than not acting in the
capacity of masters rather than servants.  But my point here is that in
this particular First Amendment political speech context, there's been an
over-reaction to the extent that government is prohibited not only from
acting as master, but also from acting in a proper capacity as servant.

It would be hard, I think, to claim that there is not "free speech" on this
listserv.  Yet there are rules of civility, including guidelines on the
length of posts, that keep one or a small handful of speakers from
dominating the discussion.  These kinds of minimal, more or less *structural
*, guidelines or rules for dialog are a type of what one might term
"servant"-inspired rule-making.  The *telos*, or end, of such servant-style
rule-making is a robust, rounded discussion with an informed "electorate"
resulting here on the listserv.

In a nutshell, the *Citizens United* approach, in the name of defeating
government as master, throws the servant baby out with the bathwater.
Because I say this, it does not mean that I am pro-bathwater, i.e.
pro-censorship, or in favor of laws that fit the government-as-master
model.

Politically, there is always a sovereign as to every area of power.  The
sovereign is the ultimate power or authority.  Put another way, the
sovereign is one you can't "back talk" to.   In this light, perhaps the new
"sovereign"`-- the ones who can't be controlled and We the People can't
talk back to (because they hide behind masks of anonymity) --`are the big
money, often corporate, donors protected by Citizens United and related
legal dynamics.

The Founders feared concentrations of wealth and power including, but not
limited to, government.  The state action doctrine is being used or abused
to render government and the people powerless while other concentrations of
wealth and power, such as corporations, are given a free hand to do
whatever they like.  This is not the balance of power they had in mind at
the Boston Tea Party, where they were tossing the tea of one of the world's
first multinational corporations into Boston Harbor because of the
excessive lobbying power the British East India Company had with Parliament.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com>
> Sender: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:18:45
> To: Smith, Brad<BSmith at law.capital.edu>
> Cc: law-election at UCI.EDU<law-election at uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 12/20/11
>
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-- 
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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