The Supreme Court case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus involves a challenge to an Ohio law that makes it illegal to “[p]ost, publish, circulate, distribute, or otherwise disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard for whether it was false or not, if the statement is designed to promote the election, nomination, or defeat of the candidate.” A parallel provision proscribes false statements “designed to promote the adoption or defeat of any ballot proposition or issue.” Susan B. Anthony List is a pro-life organization who planned to put up billboards that said “Shame on Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR tax-payer funded abortions.” They based this statement on Rep. Driehaus voting for the Affordable Care Act. He countered that the ACA did not fund abortions and threatened legal action. The Susan B. Anthony List’s advertiser refused to put up the ads due to the threatened action.
In any event, the CATO Institute with the assistance of P.J. O’Rourke filed a pretty bold amicus brief in opposition to the Ohio law and in support of the Susan B. Anthony List. It contends that truthiness is a time-honored and, more importantly, First Amendment protected part of American political discourse.
After all, where would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we’d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn’t administered quickly enough to secular humanist professors of Chicano studies.
I tend to agree with CATO on this one. Even setting aside First Amendment concerns, policing political speech for honesty is an unworkable legal thicket.
Query whether some degree of objective truth standard might be workable. For example, if I run an ad that says you had been convicted of a crime, had been disbarred, or were a Buddhist. Or what about a statement that the UN Small Arms treaty required the seizure of guns or that Agenda 21 required that no animals ever be killed. I wonder if “facts” subject to objective proof would work? I don’t know. Sorta thinking out loud.
Michael, while I always have believed in “facts” and “objective reality”, you must surely be aware of the 247 page treatise, “Truth, Truthiness and the American Way”, by famed academic I.B. Paidfor. In it he states the famous maxim: I think, therefore I am, ergo, what I think, therefore it must be.
I wish it would work, but I suspect we will have to live with free speech unfettered by truth. As Doug points out, policing it would be a legal thicket and I do have real First Amendment concerns as well. I give CATO credit for a sense of humor. It’s just too bad that the amount of money promoting those two visions is lopsided in favor of the first.
I agree with all of that. Maybe a sense of wishful thinking. Too bad we don’t have an independent media that could analyze statements and claims and report on their veracity.
Politifact? (Snicker, snicker!)
Sometimes, things that sound like great ideas just don’t work out. Exhibit A: The Ohio law. Exhibit B: My (one and only) contribution to newcomer Michelle Bachman based on a Susan B. Anthony List endorsement. Oh, well!
Speaking of truthiness, Susan B Anthony List is NOT “a pro-life organization.” They are an organization that stole Susan B Anthony’s good name to promote an anti-women, anti-reproductive rights agenda. An organization that engages in political action to return women to the days of dying of back alley abortions cannot accurately called “pro-life.”