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The McCain-Feingold-Qadhafi Act
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
16/04/2001
From time to time, I enjoy pointing out certain good ideas that the West has adopted that had their origins in Islamic thought. For example, Umar ibn Khattab pioneered the concept of full disclosure when he enthusiastically complied with a citizen's desire to know where he had gotten his cloak.
The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill seems to have gotten its inspiration not from Umar ibn Khattab, however, but from Muammar Qadhafi, a somewhat more disputable fountainhead of Muslim thought (a Western journalist once noted that Qadhafi's
Green Book seemed to be inspired less by the Qur'an, which it never cites, and more by a bad Arabic translation of John Locke). Now, the U.S. Senate seems intent on adopting what may be the worst idea in Volume One of the
Green Book.
American jurisprudence has, to this point, made a distinction between campaign activity (which is subject to regulation) and political speech (which must be completely free and unfettered). Thus, the amount of money you can donate to a particular candidate's campaign is strictly limited by law, but the amount of money you can spend promoting your own views on issues or criticizing the government is unlimited. This distinction has led to concerns by some that so-called "soft money" is being spent putatively to promote issues or to criticize government policy, but still effectively promotes the campaigns of particular candidates (however, in ways that do not violate the laws regulating "hard money" expenditures). The challenge to those who would impose restrictions on "soft money" is to find a way to do so without violating the First Amendments absolute protection of free speech.
The McCain-Feingold Act presumes to navigate these dangerous waters by introducing a distinction between spending by individuals and spending by organizations. The constitutionality of this approach is being stridently debated, with cause. What struck me is how similar it is to one proposed by Qadhafi. In Volume One of the
Green Book, Qadhafi proposes to absolutely guarantee freedom of speech for the individual while totally subjecting social speech to the presumed will of society. The means of affecting this magic is by permitting no governmental controls on the opinions of individuals but totally prohibiting anyone from speaking in a corporate or organizational voice except through the social mechanisms approved by his revolution.
McCain and Feingold seem to have adopted the same litmus test in deciding which forms of soft money spending are permitted and which are not. Now, apparently, David Horowitz can buy advertisements opposing reparations to African-Americans, but American Muslim organizations cannot buy ads criticizing Congressional aid to Israel. Reason being that the former is an individual, entitled to freedom of speech, and the latter is a corporations that is denied that right.
The attempt at further regulation of political speech in this country follows a pattern that has been appeared time after time in issue after issue. Regulations are passed in order to solve a perceived problem at any given time. Then, whenever regulations are sidestepped or gotten around, more Draconian legislation is introduced that also ends up being sidestepped or simply violated, giving rise to calls for even more Draconian legislation.
This has certainly been the pattern with campaign finance reform. Remember when Al Gore participated in a fundraiser at a Buddhist temple (clearly, a case of illegal campaign contributions)? The response of the Administration was not to more scrupulously enforce the laws he violated, but rather to demand that even stricter laws be passed - for politicians to violate with impunity.
Finally, there is the great danger that the ultimate legislation will be for complete public financing of elections. Not only will the fox guard the henhouse, but also he will be given the only set of keys to it.
This proposal would grant the already too powerful incumbents complete charge of "the mother's milk of politics." The people would then have been effectively silenced, and all power would rest in the hands of the state. American politics would then follow not Muammar Qadhafi, but Saddam Hussein.
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