During the Citizens United arguments, Justice Samuel Alito asked Malcolm Stewart, the deputy solicitor general defending the government’s censorship, whether the law would empower Congress to ban books. Stewart affirmed that books too must be subject to “electioneering communication restrictions.” And thus do our so-called liberals become book-burners. That may be of some interest to organizations far outside of the world of conservative activism — donor-supported feminist publishing houses, say, or grant-funded environmentalist documentarians. The leader of the United States Senate is a conservative from Kentucky, and the leader of the United States House of Representatives is a conservative from Wisconsin. The Left would do well to consider just whom it would be empowering to establish a censorship code. Republicans cannot be trusted with that power. Neither can Democrats. Neither can Libertarians, Greens, Freemasons, Elks, Methodists, or other bad hombres — or even good hombres, absolute power corrupting absolutely and all that.
A liberal society is one in which everybody has free-speech rights. A society in which some people have free-speech rights and some do not, depending on the self-interested whim of people with political power, is a totalitarian society realized to a greater or lesser degree. Heinrich Heine’s advice on the connection between the treatment of books and the treatment of human beings is always and forever relevant.
–Kevin Williamson (writer)
(H/T: Instapundit)
