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Not your Father’s First Amendment

Matt Bevin, owner of a bell factory here in Connecticut is the Tea Party candidate who is softening up Mitch McConnell for November. He has, of course, inserted his foot in a number of his own orifices, his mouth being the least embarrassing. He's currently in a bit of trouble for attending a rally in support of cock fighting. He was defensive for a bit, but then realized that those attacking him were actually attacking the constitution (with Republicans it always turns out that an attack on them is an attack on the Founders), so now he's in counterattack mode:

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Matt Bevin continued to address his presence at a rally for supporters of legalizing cockfighting by saying America's Founding Fathers were very involved in the cockfighting world too.

“But it's interesting when you look at cockfighting and dogfighting as well,” Bevin said in an interview on the Terry Meiners Show on Louisville's WHAS on Thursday. “This isn't something new, it wasn't invented in Kentucky for example. I mean the Founding Fathers were all many of them very involved in this and always have been [sic.]”

“I'm going to defend the right of people to freely gather and discuss whatever they want to,” Bevin said. “I'm a believer in the Constitution and in the First Amendment,” Bevin also said. “Not just for raising money but also for freedom of speech.”

via Talking Points Memo

I'm sure many have already pointed out that “the Founding Fathers were all many of them involved in slavery and always have been”, which, oddly enough, doesn't make slavery right, though by Bevin's logic, it must. I won't even mention that glaring problem, (or bother to find out whether James Madison really attended cock fights) because it's not what got my attention.

No, what struck me was the last quoted sentence. It now appears that, at least among Republicans, the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable them to raise money, with actual “speech” being something of an also ran. How times have changed in just the last 10 years, never mind 30. I can remember a time when corporations weren't people; when the idea that anyone would even argue that a corporation could have a religion was so absurd it would never occur to anyone to discuss it; and it was a given that there was a legitimate interest in limiting the role of big money in politics that overrode any infinitesimal First Amendment concerns anyone could drum up. Now, I admit that I am a geezer, (though relatively newly minted) but even my kids can remember such a time. All it took was a stolen presidential election, and we were able to arrive at the advanced stage of jurisprudence we now enjoy.

Benjamin Franklin warned us. We got a Republic, but we've failed to keep it. It will be a matter of historical interest, I guess, to find out how long we continue to insist that our oligarchy is really a democracy.

How long did the Romans hang on to the notion that the Empire was a Republic? I predict we'll beat their record.

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