Dear Fellow Liberals, Citizens United Is Right

Michael Kinsley: Accept the free-speech principle, even if you hate the ruling
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 5, 2012 1:53 PM CDT
Dear Fellow Liberals, Citizens United Is Right
A view of the Supreme Court in Washington.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

John Roberts is suddenly a darling of liberals because he upheld ObamaCare even though it's clear he personally hates the idea of it. It's time for liberals to apply the same kind of "intellectual honesty" to a court decision they abhor, writes Michael Kinsley at Bloomberg. That would be Citizens United, the ruling that made it possible for corporations to flood this year's campaign with money. It was "correctly decided," Kinsley argues, and "liberals ought to show the chief justice that we too can acknowledge a principle even when we don’t agree with the result."

Limits on spending restrict free speech—even if the money comes from corporations—and the court was therefore right to back up the First Amendment, writes Kinsley. What to do? Stop complaining and "make money a voting issue," he suggests. "All it would take would be the defeat of a few representatives (and maybe a senator or two) precisely because they or others spent an offensive amount of money on the effort to get re-elected." Read his full column here. (More Citizens United stories.)

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