The issue was that the McCain-Feingold law bans corporate money being used for electioneering. … At the first Supreme Court argument in March, a government lawyer, answering a hypothetical question, said the government could also make it a crime to distribute books advocating the election or defeat of political candidates so long as they were paid for by corporations and not their political action committees. That position seemed to astound several of the more conservative justices, and there were gasps in the courtroom.
– New York Times, "Supreme Court to Revisit 'Hillary' Documentary," Aug. 29, 2009
Few political books have ever been published with more perfect timing than Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism." Although Goldberg may have gotten the identity of the victorious liberal incorrect, his work has nevertheless proven to be a reliable indicator of the increasingly materno-fascistic behavior of the Democratic House, Senate and White House. The present Washington regime is the political version of the so-called helicopter moms who hover over their children at all times in an attempt to exert constant control over their decisions and behavior.
Whether it is forcing the young and healthy to buy unneeded health insurance, preventing the insured from seeing the doctors of their choice or dictating the unnecessary destruction of perfectly viable used cars, the collection of petty central planners in Washington are a direct and growing obstacle to the constitutional and natural liberties of Americans. To put it bluntly, they are a cancer on American freedom that has now grown to point that they dare to directly attack the Bill of Rights.
Intelligent observers have always known that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law was an outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. But this went largely unrecognized by the American people for two reasons. First, the law was passed under the guise of protecting democracy from the undue influence of corporate wealth, which sounds reasonable to the average voter even if it is demonstrably false. Second, because the law was of great material benefit to the media by hampering the ability of non-media institutions and individuals to interfere with the political messages being pushed by the media, the greater part of the media wasn't terribly inclined to complain about it or draw attention to the probable ramifications.
Furthermore, McCain-Feingold was written to distinguish between broadcast, satellite or cable transmissions and printed formats such as books and newspapers. However, the distinction was a false and arbitrary one made to avoid the very PR debacle that appears to be developing, as there was no rational basis supporting it. Therefore, the decision of the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1990 decision, "Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce," is extremely important, as if it does not, the federal banning of books will be only one of a series of deeply problematic consequences. As one liberal advocate of free-speech restrictions declared: "A campaign document in the form of a book can be banned."
That the liberal fascists are more genuinely fascist than liberal is not difficult to see in their constant struggle to seize the communications high ground and deny it to their ideological opponents. From the calls of House and Senate Democrats for the reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine," to the first pass at a media bailout known as the Newspaper Revitalization Act, to the continuing ramifications of McCain-Feingold and the proposed office of the national cybersecurity adviser, it is clear that the American Left will unhesitatingly sacrifice every principle it supposedly possesses to secure its control over national mass communications. This, too, was explained by Goldberg, as fascism is above all an eminently practical ideology.
No doubt this is why the mainstream media has become visibly nervous over the decisions of a few Americans to openly carry weaponry at a few recent political rallies. Because they are complicit in the federal government's attempts to eradicate America's First Amendment rights, it should be no surprise that many members of the mainstream media quiver in fear when they imagine at whom the exercise of America's Second Amendment rights will be directed, should such exercise one day become necessary in, as it has been written, the course of human events.