The Supreme Court Gets It Half Right

This also appears at the blog site of the Democratic Party. To read any comments that people have made about this brief essay please read it there.

Two recent Supreme court rulings, both of which were decided by 5-4 votes, upheld and diminished first amendment rights of citizens. Both rulings were supported by the GOP and lambasted by Democrats.

The first ruling is the "Bong Hits for Jesus" ruling. A young man held up a banner with those words on a sidewalk from his school. The principal said this violates the school's mission statement and suspended the boy. The Supreme court agree with the school district in what is, to me, some pretty shaky, and dangerous, logic. If the boy was on school property, the court might be making sense, but this ruling allows the school to punish speech even off school property. I think the ruling is full of hooey.

The second ruling involved a Wisconsin anti-abortion group running an ad that violated the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. According to the act, no interest group is supposed to airing any ads pertaining to an election. This supposedly removes the impact of soft money on elections. Soft money is used by both parties to run ads under the guise of “issues.” In the case of the anti abortion group, the court ruled that such strictures violate the first amendment. I agree with the ruling. Most democrats I know don’t.

Most democrats I know also don’t agree with the first ruling. I think the Supreme Court got the first amendment half right, and maybe in baseball batting .500 is great, but in this case they should be batting 1.000. The problem with the GOP supporting both rulings is that they are not being consistent. If they are truly for the first amendment, they’d be supporting the kid on the street with the banner. The democrats, too, are being inconsistent. If they are truly for the first amendment, they’d be supporting the anti-abortion group.

I liken it to the Klan marching in Skokie case. Both parties would do well to revisit Oliver Wendell Holmes:

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment, more than any other, it is the principle of free thought; not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

“The ultimate test of a belief in free speech should be whether it can be extended to people you hate.”

reading on cd

For the past few years, I have been "reading" books on tape. Things I have read before and things that are new to me. As an educator, I think the sound of a turning page, the smell of paper, and curling up in bed with a book is worth the price of admission to anything in print. And it is indeed a ticket to a form of entertainment unlike any other.

Don't get me wrong. I love a finely crafted lyric line in music. I love fine art, at least art I know what it is when I am looking at it. I can never get into things like Picasso putting a woman's nipples where her nose should be, and I do think that Chicago got ripped off when it put up that metal thing in Daley Plaza, but good art, like Picasso's "Blue Guitarist" I can look at for hours and get enjoyment.

Still, it is books that thrill me more than other art. They are a work of the language, communication at its lowest and highest level at the same time. They force my mind to imagine, to think, to see things as they are and as they aren't.

I can't curl up with a laptop and read a book. I need the sound and smell of the page. I need to bookmark where I left off and come back without any effort other than opening the book to the spot where I last left off before I lay it on the coffee table or night stand. I love going to the bookcase and looking at titles, the act of reaching with one finger to pull the selected volume into my grasp, to stand there leafing through the pages to see if something in them wants me to take that one to read next. (That more than anything is a reason to keep every darn library in America open.)

Still, I have taken to listening to books on tape, or rather mp3 files on the car sound system to and from work. Some are rather good and capture the essence of the word, particularly with a good reader. Some are just somebody reading with no emphasis, no change in tone or voice at all. But, I drive to work an hour every day, it is a way to pass the time and not listen to the mindless drivel of talk radio.