Do You Personally Believe Spending Money is Speech?

Bodhisattva said:

That still does not make money a form of speech...

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The physical means of speaking/publishing actually ARE protected. In an economy based on specialization, you're allowed to trade what you produce for those means. Since we're not in a barter economy or a subsistence economy you trade what you specialize in for money and then trade that money for the specific things that you want and if they stop you from doing that with a censorial motive, they are acting as a censor and infringing your freedom of expression. The result will be that the regulation will be subjected to a stricter form of scrutiny and will obviously fail scrutiny. The 'money isn't speech' crowd simply wants to presume a general applicability and permit the regulation to be subjected to 'rational basis' review. It is a bad argument and the excerpt from the Minnesota Star Tribune shows exactly why.

In a broader sense, an excellent mode to illuminate the doctrine are the civil rights laws. The initial cases were easy to adjudicate actually because the laws weren't facially neutral. They expressly discriminated against African-Americans. After segregation fell, the result was that states had to start writing facially neutral statutes. Of course the problem is that many of those statutes were still made with discriminatory intent, ie. they had a disparate impact. Roundabout discrimination is still discrimination in the same manner that roundabout censoring still infringes on your right to free speech.

TheDemSocialist said:

We know what the USSC says. But do you believe spending money is speech?

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No I don't.

no i do not,i can spend money without saying a word,on this we agree.


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