TEST CASE FOR CORPORATE FREE SPEECH
RE “CORPORATE free speech? Since when?’’: Yes, let’s restrict free speech to those who demonstrate “a willingness to sacrifice individual interests’’ and “the ability to deliberate well about common purposes and ends.’’ Imagine silencing both houses of Congress in a single stroke!
Jim Sleeper’s fear of corporate free speech is as vacuous as the notion that a largely unseen movie threatened the 2008 election. Corporations “inundate our deliberations’’ every day with advertising, yet we all say no far more often than we say yes. Americans of every description routinely navigate the crowded, unruly marketplace of ideas. We don’t need baby-sitting.
Michael Smith
Cynthiana, Ky. 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
