A Small Victory for Free Speech

On 25 June, the Supreme Court gave a small victory to the First Amendment. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the justices struck down one of the unconstitutional applications of the McCain-Feingold “Campaign Finance Reform Act.”

This a only a victory against one small outrage of McCain-Feingold, and depressingly this decision came down with only a 5-4 margin. However, this is at least one positive move towards restoring the strength of the First Amendment.

This decision should never have been necessary in the first place, as the Congress should never have passed such an abominable piece of legislation in the first place — and the President should never have signed it.

I am reminded of the words of the late great Barry Goldwater, who said “I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.”

If our current generation of politicians evinced the same moral courage as Barry Goldwater, our great nation would be served by the kind of government which it deserves.