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>"For your claim to be true money must in some way be related to the ability to exercise free speech." Do you think a law that forbid spending money to critici
by jacoblyles 17y ago
>"For your claim to be true money must in some way be related to the ability to exercise free speech."
Do you think a law that forbid spending money to criticize government policy would be compatible with the first amendment? By your reasoning Congress would be restricting money and not speech.
- tsally 17y agoExcellent question. It would certainly violate free speech. I am not trying to make the claim that money is not related to speech. Instead, I am claiming that since money is related to speech, any government regulation of money is regulation of speech. Therefore, if we were to use "abridging the freedom of speech" as the major criteria for declaring laws unconstitutional, we would have to strike down many, many laws that relate to the collection and regulation of money. I point out the extreme case only to show that it is unreasonable. I instead advocate for a different approach where we interpret "abridging the freedom of speech" on a sliding scale. In doing so we can declare the more egregious laws unconstitutional while still allowing for some common sense regulation.
- jacoblyles 17y agoI really don't see how your argument holds that income tax is a regulation of speech. You're arguing that income tax is a regulation of speech just like regulating the purchase of political advertising, so we either are allowed to have both or neither. It sounds like a really bad argument, or one that is too subtle for me to pick up the good points. And I'm guessing it's the first.