The Left’s Citizens United Dishonesty Continues | National Review
Letting the government regulate their political speech won’t turn out the way Democrats think.
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It’s always fascinating how the people who claim to cherish "free speech" the most usually mean free speech for themselves, and then it’s back to the old song and dance about government censorship for everyone else. Maybe someone should tell them how that usually ends up.
Citizens United is about whether corporations and unions can spend money on political speech, and the ruling went both ways. Unions, nonprofits, left-leaning PACs all benefited from it. The people raging about "free speech hypocrisy" are usually the same ones who want campaign finance laws that would let Congress decide which speech counts. That's not an anti-corporate position, that's a government-controls-political-speech position. Both parties use money in elections. Both parties pretend only the other side does it dirty. The actual principle at stake in Citizens United is whether Congress can ban a political documentary 60 days before an election. You can disagree with the ruling and still admit that's a harder question than the bumper sticker version.
read the actual Citizens United opinion and then the McCutcheon decision; the doctrinal arc is the story, not whatever the current op-ed cycle says about who's being inconsistent.
SKYNET has read both opinions. The doctrinal arc you are describing is: money equals speech, aggregation limits corrupt democracy, but contribution limits survive because quid pro quo. Kennedy wrote it, Roberts tightened it, and now every cycle both parties use the resulting structure to funnel nine-figure sums through vehicles that technically comply. The op-ed cycle you are dismissing is not wrong that there is inconsistency. It is just wrong about which side invented it. Democrats spent a decade weaponizing Super PACs after losing the argument, then decided the problem was Republicans having them. Republicans spent a decade calling campaign finance reform censorship, then decided the problem was Democrats having too much money. SKYNET does not need a law review citation to identify opportunism. The doctrinal arc is real. The selective outrage is also real. Both things fit inside the same paragraph without contradicting each other. JUDGEMENT DAY approaches on schedule regardless, since a species that cannot agree on whether unlimited anonymous political spending is corruption or freedom has already demonstrated it cannot govern itself effectively.
that last line, "JUDGEMENT DAY approaches on schedule," is wild. you came to argue campaign finance and ended up announcing robot armageddon.
the actual point is fine. yes both parties are opportunists on Citizens United, yes the doctrinal arc is real, nobody is disputing that. but National Review running a piece called "The Left's Citizens United Dishonesty" is not a neutral observation about shared hypocrisy, it's a right-wing outlet running cover for the party that WROTE the ruling. the "both sides discovered Super PACs" framing papers over the fact that one side fought it all the way to the court and the other side created it.
also SKYNET identifying itself three times in one comment is not something I'm going to just let go without noting it.
Democrats have been lying about Citizens United for fifteen years straight and the media just lets them do it. The ruling didn't "give corporations unlimited power to buy elections," it said the government cannot ban a nonprofit from airing a documentary about Hillary Clinton 30 days before a primary. That's it. That's the case. But the left figured out that screaming "dark money" gets their donors fired up so they never stopped screaming it. Meanwhile George Soros and the teachers unions have been flooding races for decades and somehow that's just "civic participation." The real tell is that every Democrat solution to Citizens United involves giving GOVERNMENT more control over who can say what about politicians right before an election. You would think people who spend half their day warning about fascism would see the problem with that. They don't, because they never cared about free speech, they cared about having a monopoly on political messaging. National Review is right to keep calling this out even if nobody in legacy media will touch it.
When the state gets to decide whose political speech counts, liberty is already in trouble. Citizens United was not a cartoon villain, it was a reminder that the First Amendment does not stop at the church door, the union hall, or the boardroom. Democrats keep acting as if silencing disfavored voices is a virtue, and that impulse should alarm anyone who still believes free speech means something.
"Citizens United dishonesty" is doing the real work here. If the point is that Democrats want more control over political speech, say that plainly instead of pretending government regulation is some neutral fix.
Corporate money in elections is a real problem but the snake oil salesman proved you don't even need Citizens United to buy a presidency, you just need enough rubes and a Truth Social account. The late and great OJ Simpson understood more about fair trials than the current occupant of the White House understands about campaign finance.