[EL] Abrams & Blackman are Right...

[Steve Hoersting]

... Breyer's invocation of the collective is the most disturbing part.

http://joshblackman.com/blog/2014/04/06/floyd-abrams-on-the-disturbing-recurring-reality-of-collective-liberty/

"Egalitarian" justifications for speech restrictions -- a la Rick, a la
Owen Fiss -- masquerade with a patina of hyper-individualism: Every
individual deserves an equal, egalitarian, quanta of influence upon the
political process.

But the wholly egalitarian is the wholly undifferentiated. The wholly
undifferentiated is the collective -- not a representative aggregation of
competing voices in a representative Republic; not an aggregation of the
voices of many individuals exercising individual rights.

Egalitarianism tends toward collectivism.

The distinction is not word salad; it is everything. "Collective speech" is
always managed (by the bureaucracy). Managed speech is always collective.

We should be grateful to J. Breyer for naming the elephant in the room and
saving us a lot of trouble: Individualism and Collectivism remain the
argumentative poles of the campaign finance debate. (Breyer may well have
saved Lessig and Teachout the unnecessary effort of future verbal
contortions; of dressing their policy prescriptions in the Aristotelian
individualism of the Founders).

There are fundamental points on which the leaders of the campaign-finance
camps agree upon (forthcoming protestations to the contrary,
notwithstanding). They are these: There are only individuals. And
self-government *requires* free speech.

If I could impart anything to Rick Hasen, to Cass Sunstein, indeed, to
David Brooks on these points, it would be this -- and I mean it sincerely:

Forget Kant and all his followers on matters of epistemology. The five
senses are valid. The individual mind works: There is no harm in voters
voting with "too much" information. You have nothing to fear from
businessmen who don't operate by force. You have nothing to fear from a
so-called hayseed in the "hinterlands" running his own life.

Best regards,

-- 
Stephen M. Hoersting
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