Why did they find him?

Recently an absurdity of a film called "Innocence of Muslims" has been making the rounds in the news. Although all the evidence indicates that the attacks on the embassies and consulates had been planned long in advance, the film is being blamed for the attacks.

Although it is understandable that some people are curious about who produced this teaser for a movie that doesn’t even actually exist, and therefore various news media organizations have been trying to find out who it is so that they can satisfy the demand, there is a very disturbing element to the quest for the identity of the producer.

Why is the United States government involved in trying to figure out his identity? Has the producer of this teaser actually broken any laws of the United States or of the fifty states? What law could he have broken that would spur such an investigation? And if he were put on trial, say for incitement, would he not have a solid first amendment defense under freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion?

Having the Associated Press try to find his identity is one thing. If a person thrusts himself into the public eye, then the public has every right to try to find out more. But having the government do the same without any identifiable cause is itself cause for concern.

Yes, people can say things that impede the foreign policy of government officials. People can say things that embarrass government officials to, although far less so than in the past.

This following so closely on the heels of having Brandon Raub committed to a psychiatric hospital for the “crime” of criticizing the government, while having the British "ally" threaten Ecuadorean sovereignty to claim Julian Assange shows that the line has been crossed a long time ago with regards to the lawlessness of the United States regime.

Occupy Campaign Finance Reform

For tactical reasons, the Occupy Wall Street movement is disorganized. That has made it difficult for them to come up with goals that can be agreed to by a majority of those involved in the movement. One issue, though, is gaining wide acceptance across the Occupy movement. Opposition to "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" and an advocacy of Campaign Finance Reform in general is increasingly advocated by the Occupy movement.

The ire is understandable given the focus of the Occupy movement. In the corporatist collusion between big business and big government, they focus on the business half of the partnership. The goal, as it is forming, is to prohibit all third party campaign activities. The target is Super PACs as well as corporations, and when pressed on the issue there is grudging agreement that unions are covered as well. The only form of donation that would be considered acceptable would be directly to the campaign.

Although the intent is good this will achieve the exact opposite of the desired goal, making it quite the same as every preceding campaign finance reform law. Those pushing this particular change are not well versed in economics, especially the law of unintended consequences, in spite of how the history of campaign finance law is a glaring example of it in action. Ever preceding law was put in place to reduce the importance of money in politics, and money is now more important than ever in politics. The Super PACs are the end result of a long line of those laws.

The basic campaign finance reform law is a limit on how much an individual can donate. This would prohibit the wealthy from bankrolling a candidate at the expense of the masses. What actually happens is that it shuts out competing views. Suppose there are two parties, one fifty times larger than the other. While both would benefit from a few big contributions, only one would benefit from many small contributions because it has the donor base to do so.

One might think that this would therefore encourage those who want actual change to work within the party to tap into that fundraising machine, but the party leadership controls who the party helps. The leadership will then share mailing lists and donor lists with candidates the leadership likes. This has the effect of binding candidates tightly to the party.

A way around the tight control of party leadership was developed, the PAC and then the Super PAC. And the solution to the problem of money in politics is to eliminate the only way left that actual advocates of change might use to get elected? The end result of this is something else that is also suggested often, full public financing of campaigns. When pressed on how someone would qualify for that financing, the suggestion was made of petitions, which would be recruited by the party binding the candidates even more closely to the party.

The way to eliminate the Super PACs and to reduce the influence of money in politics is to eliminate the cause. That means removing all the campaign finance laws that led up to the point where the only way outside of the tightly controlled system is by people pooling their money in PACs. People forget that a campaign donation is indeed a form of political speech, and it was political speech in particular that was supposed to be protected by the freedom of speech clause of the first amendment (the freedom of religion clause covered religious speech).

That does not mean that only the rich would have a voice, contrary to the claims of those who cannot imagine another way of doing things. Just as attempts to limit money have increased its importance, removing the limits would decrease its importance giving more people a greater voice in the political system.

Fascism with Free Speech

One of the most difficult challenges people face in convincing people that the United States is far from free is that, for the most part, people still have a considerable amount of the right to free speech as allegedly protected by the first amendment.

There have not been any incidents to truly rival the White Rose Resistance Movement of Nazi Germany, in which the six people who were handing out pamphlets criticizing the government were executed. It is true that compared to Nazi Germany, Americans have pretty impressive free speech rights. Anybody can start a blog, or post to any internet forum, and criticize the leadership of the United States. There is no crime in saying that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are incompetent, idiotic, despotic psychopaths.

But doing so has no impact.

Sometimes internet activity can have an impact. In the case of Michael Nifong, William Anderson’s relentless blogging, combined with the defendants having the resources to defend themselves, not only led to the case being dismissed but to Nifong being disbarred, losing his job, and spending an entire day in jail. It was clear that the trial of Nifong had the entire court staff mystified because it was a prosecutor being put on trial for prosecutorial conduct. But that was an isolated case. Libertarians commenting on the case tried repeatedly to branch the discussion from this particular example to the behavior of the legal system in the United States and the behavior of prosecutors, only to have the audience disappear every time. While this particular case was impacted, the system as a whole was not impacted.

Or there is the case of the Critical Mass Cyclist, where the internet forced the case to not only be dropped but for the officer involved to be stripped of his badge. He was not incarcerated for his crime. This relates to the case of the BART shooting in Oakland, where the officer was convicted of fourth degree manslaughter because of the large number of cell phones recording the shooting - after the police attempted to confiscate all the cell phones in the vicinity of the shooting. In both of those cases, modern technology facilitated free speech to achieve some (albeit insufficient) justice, but libertarians commenting on the cases tried to branch the discussion from isolated incidents to police behavior in general, only to have the audience disappear every time.

In these specific instances, in these specific cases, the specific people involved were impacted by free speech, but the overall system was not impacted. Even so, there is discussion inside Washington on how to regulate blogging, because even isolated incidents show that the power of the elite is not absolute. It is when speech starts having an impact that government officials seem to be more than willing to sacrifice the first amendment. It is already the case that elected officials believe campaign contributions are not a form of speech at all, and have managed to convince many people of that.

Radio personalities John and Ken of KFI640 were unhappy with Congressman David Dreier area over the topic of illegal immigration. So they led a campaign to have him lose his next election, calling it "Fire Dreier" and urging people to vote against him due to his stand on illegal immigration. Their impact was such that, in his safe district, he won by a small margin instead of a large margin. That result was so troubling that the Republican Party filed an FEC complaint against them in a deliberate effort to chill political speech. The FEC has not taken any action against John and Ken or KFI.

Unlike the victory of John and Ken, Julian Heicklen is constantly being abused by those in authority, so that when he is not being arrested by police he is being involuntarily committed to the hospital. He is receiving this treatment for handing out FIJA pamphlets in front of court houses. He is not a major radio personality in a major media market, and that is why the police can continue to get away with this kind of abuse. FIJA pamphlets are a direct assault on the court system which has conspired to prevent people from exercising their full rights as jurors. In some states, such as California, it is currently illegal to hand out pamphlets on court house grounds at all, unlike in the places were Julian Heicklen does his work.

It is clear that free speech is under assault, but in a very careful manner to protect all speech except for speech that may actually make a difference. That way the average American will not ever encounter a situation where he will find his free speech to be limited, and thus will never believe that free speech is limited in the first place.