The Neo-Malthusian Tribulation

Regulating broadcast “fairness” - The FCC should stay out of it.

Regulating broadcast “decency” - The FCC should stay out of it.

Campaign finance “reform” - Donations should be disclosed, but that’s it. McCain-Feingold and similar laws should be repealed or declared unconstitutional. Buckley v. Valeo was wrongly decided.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus - It’s free speech. There is no drug exception to the First Amendment. School officials should stay out of it. Morse v. Frederick is wrongly decided.

In the recent 5-4 decision in Morse v. Frederick, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the conservative majority said:

The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic. It is no doubt offensive to some, perhaps amusing to others. To still others, it probably means nothing at all. Frederick himself claimed "that the words were just nonsense meant to attract television cameras." But Principal Morse thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one.

Wrong. The school officials should not have been given the benefit of the doubt. "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" doesn't promote the use of illegal drugs by minors. It's political speech advocating the legalization of marijuana. The government is afraid to expose high school students to a free and fair debate of the drug legalization issue for the same reason that they are afraid to expose high school students to a free and fair debate of the abstinence issue. They know the pro-legalization and anti-abstinence side would win the debate.

The only hope for the inner city is vouchers, so that all the churches can go in and plant Christian schools in the inner cities and capture these fatherless young people for Christ and teach them biblical discipline and so forth. It's either God or it's ruin for our country, I do believe.

Jerry Falwell, The 700 Club, September 3, 1996

Conservatives often claim that the reason they support school vouchers is because they want to save little black kids in the inner cities. Since when did conservatives give a rat's ass about little black kids in the inner city?

The real intended beneficiaries of vouchers are white, mostly Republican, parents in the suburbs who send or want to sent their children to private and religious schools. Many of these parents resent the fact that they are shelling out money for their own kids' tuition and also have to pay taxes to send other people's kids to public schools.

Whether vouchers would actually help middle income parents send their kids to the most exclusive private schools is highly questionable. Many of these schools already charge tuition in the $20,000 per year range. It is highly unlikely that any vouchers that are offered will be that high. And if, for example, vouchers in the $10,000 range were offered, the most exclusive schools would simply adjust their tuition accordingly, to $30,000 per year. Parents who can already afford a $20,000 tuition would simply take the voucher and pay the difference. They want and will pay to send their children to exclusive schools, where they will not have to mingle with the hoi polloi.

Conservatives have a litany of complaints against the public schools, many of which they are reluctant to openly discuss, that go all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education. An old segregationist saying in the South says that the Supreme Court, under Earl Warren, "Took the Bible out of our schools and put the Negro in," only they didn't use those exact words. Conservatives resented racial integration, school busing, the absence of overt Christian instruction, the presence of instruction in evolutionary biology, and the liberal political influence of public school teachers' unions, which traditionally support and contribute to the Democratic Party.

Conservatives generally attribute the idea of vouchers to the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman, who wrote Capitalism and Freedom in 1962. Friedman's ideas were frequently controversial, but he was intellectually respectable and he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1976.

Friedman surely did advocate school vouchers in Capitalism and Freedom, and he may have discussed the idea in the 1950s, but was he really the first? A little known Virginia school desegregation case, Griffin v. County School Board, 377 U.S. 218 reached the United States Supreme Court in 1964. As part of the campaign of massive resistance against the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the school board of Prince Edward County simply shut down the public schools altogether and adopted a voucher or "freedom of choice" plan, explaining that

The School Board of this county is confronted with a court decree which requires the admission of white and colored children to all the schools of the county without regard to race or color. Knowing the people of this county as we do, we know that it is not possible to operate the schools of this county within the terms of that principle and, at the same time, maintain an atmosphere conducive to the educational benefit of our people.

Prince Edward County initially adopted the "tuition grant" or voucher policy in 1956, but the case makes clear that the Virginia's tuition grant program began in 1930 to aid to children who had lost their fathers in World War I.

The Prince Edward County plan was not fully implemented until 1959 due to various challenges in the federal and Virginia court systems, and various actions by the Virginia legislature, but eventually the public schools were closed, school taxes in the county were not levied, and a private organization, the Prince Edward School Foundation operated private schools for white students only. From 1959 until the Supreme Court ordered the school board to reopen the public schools, black students in Prince Edward County were effectively deprived of educational opportunities.

Rent that Marie movie. Think about what Fred Thompson did after Watergate. Think about how he got his acting career started.

He represented Marie Ragghianti in the Clemency for Cash scandal involving the late Gov Ray Blanton.

Clemency for Cash.

Now Thompson is among the main ones pushing for a Libby pardon.

Conservative Republicans would never be so crass as to offer cash for clemency. No, they'd be much more indirect about the quid pro quo. Be a team player. We'll take care of the legal defense fund. It's fixed. Everything will be arranged, including a high paying job after this is all over -- provided you keep quiet and protect Bush and Cheney.

Let me say from the outset that I'm against the fairness doctrine, for the same reason that I'm against campaign finance "reform": I think both infringe on the freedom of speech. If somebody wants to contribute their money to a candidate or political cause, they ought to be free give an unlimited amount, as long as the contribution is publicly disclosed.

The fairness doctrine was necessary back in the days when there were only a few networks. Today, there are many media outlets and it is not necessary. The FCC and other government agencies should concentrate on preventing the oligopolistic concentration of ownership of broadcast media by outlets like Clear Channel and News Corp, and forget about regulating the content.

Here's a question for conservatives who maintain that radio should be driven by consumer preferences and market forces: Are you also against content restrictions on profane and "indecent" language? I'm consistent. I'm against 'em. But I'll bet the conservatives won't be consistent. I'm betting that they have no problem with the FCC keeping this kind of material off the air.