…whether you are liberal or conservative, democrat or republican (or anything else).
A sitting Supreme Court Justice asserts that the 1st Ammendment is a “collective” right that exists not to prevent government abuses, but to ensure that ”public opinion could be channeled into effective governmental action.” Scary enough. Even scarier is that 3 other sitting Justices agreed with that opinion. The initial Justice is Steven Breyer and the quotes are from his dissenting opinion in the recent McCutcheon decision which has to do with campaign contributions and the constitutionality of limits thereto.
It is amazing to what lengths Progressive Liberals will go in order to justify their collectivist Oligarchich schemes. Breyer’s assertions stand the First Ammendment on it’s head. If the purpose if the 1st Ammendment were to ensure that the “collective” (read “majority” or better yet “mob”) could channel their public opinion into effective government action why would it start out with “Congress Shall Make No Law…”? Sounds like the intent was to impede “effective government action”.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – First Ammendment
If you have read the Federalist Papers you should understand that the founder’s intent was the exact opposite of Breyer’s assertion of the right of collective speech in order to bring about effective governement action. The founders feared “the tyranny of the majority” and therefore wanted to inhibit any government action unless it could be broadly agreed upon by all parties after being rigorously weighed and debated. The intent was protection of the rights of the individual. Not exactly the opposite, as Breyer asserts. And the fact that four of nine Justices support this opinion should scare you because all of our individual inalienable rights apparently are hanging by a thread.