Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government—and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one’s own antagonists. A “right” does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone’s views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action. – AYN RAND
By centralizing how accounting must be performed, Congress is trying to control the quality and content of information necessary for the markets to function properly. Once information is in the hands of the government, it’s only a short walk to actually dictating and managing outcomes.
Maybe it was not the most important case before the Supreme Court of the United States. But still it was a galling example of the way some justices casually wave aside the rights of ordinary people for the sake of some special interest that they favor. The case...
The Enron scandal was welcomed like an unexpected Christmas present by Democrats who, together with much of the media, have tried to tie the scandal to the Bush administration. However, as more and more information has come out about Enron, it has become clear that...
Newsflash: The woman who helped launder Al Gore’s Buddhist temple money has not served a single day in jail. And she probably never will. The hidden story of how funny money honey Maria Hsia escaped any meaningful punishment for corrupting our election system...
The genie cannot be kept in the bottle.
The House Republican leadership announced that on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 campaign finance regulation legislation will be brought to the floor for a vote. A similar bill has already passed in the Senate and if passed by the House, this legislation threatens a...
Some statements are so outrageous that they stand apart from all others. In my opinion, the winner this week for the most lunatic goes to the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). According to the Library Journal Academic News Wire of April 26, 2001, the CPUSA...
You don’t end bribery and corruption by banning contributions to campaigns. Instead, you simply step up prosecution against bribery and corruption.
Despite media proclamations of “the public’s right to know” and frequent invocations of the First Amendment, there has been a deafening silence from the national media over the storm trooper tactics used on college campuses against student newspapers...
To the majority, the pragmatic goal of “avoiding the appearance of corruption” is more important than the First Amendment. One wonders if the limit of this line of non-thinking is that only individuals speaking on soap boxes ultimately have protected speech.
YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD of the University of Phoenix, but it has more students than Harvard, Yale or Notre Dame —- combined. There is a reason you probably have not heard of the University of Phoenix. It represents a new development in higher education and one...
For the past week, our politicians have been busy constructing the foundations of censorship in America. And worse: They have been doing so unanimously. Censorship is being promoted across the political and cultural spectrum, from Al Gore and Joe Lieberman to John...
Tracinski dismissed Gore and Lieberman’s claim that they are concerned only with ‘marketing’ and not artistic expression.
Censorship refers to the government’s forcible suppression of speech, to the imposition of legal penalties on those who would express particular points of view.
The following statement originally appeared as an advertisement, placed by Elia Kazan in the New York Times, April 12, 1952. In the past weeks intolerable rumors about my political position have been circulating in New York and Hollywood. I want to make my stand...
There is no such thing as “private censorship.” It is only when government uses its coercive powers to inhibit speech that censorship occurs.
During the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, people of that court replaced saying the word “nigger”(as used by former LA police detective Mark Fuhrman) with “the ‘N’-word.” Last year, Merriam-Webster was asked by certain people to omit...
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