During the 1990s, when we spent a lot of time debating campaign finance reform, conservatives argued that restrictions on how much someone could give to a candidate or spend on an election were a violation of free speech. The answer to the problem, they often said, was disclosure. Let a corporation spend as much as it wants on campaigns, as long as we know who's spending what; that will take care of the "appearance of corruption" problem. This argument was unpersuasive then, but even so, now that the Roberts Court has unleashed corporate money with the Citizens United decision, they've changed their tune. Now they're fervently opposed to disclosure of campaign spending. Why? Their rationale now is that we must maintain anonymity to protect against liberal bullies, whether activists or the government.
Apparently, they're afraid that patriotic American "persons" like, say, oil and tobacco companies, might find themselves not only the victims of boycotts and nasty e-mails, but they might also be targeted for intimidation by the government. Blogging over at Greg Sargent's place, Adam mentions how silly this fear is, but it's worth taking particular note of.
There have been many, many times in American history when people exercised their First Amendment rights and as a consequence found themselves the target of government intimidation. But these cases have almost always been people on the left, not people on the right. Whether we're talking about the Palmer raids nearly a century ago, or the McCarthyite surveillance of supposed communists in the 1950s, or COINTELPRO in the 1960s, or Nixon's "enemies list," or the explosion of surveillance of anti-war groups that occurred after the passage of the PATRIOT Act (you know those Quakers, always harboring terrorists), the fact is that corporations campaigning to be rid of the burden of taxes aren't the ones who get the FBI sniffing around their garbage cans.
That may explain why Tea Partiers, who are so passionate about government tyranny in the form of giving people health insurance, never express much concern when the government does things like read people's e-mails and listen in on their phone conversations. Because they know they're not going to be the target.
-- Paul Waldman
