Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Goo-Goo Chorus of Silence
The Goo-Goo Chorus of Silence
Jan 8, 2025 6:47 AM

George Soros just donated another $6 million to Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Super Political Action Committee, raising the total the billionaire has contributed thus far to her 2016 campaign to $7 million. Liberals and progressives who can be counted on to hyperventilate every time the Koch brothers drop a dollar into a Salvation Army drum haven’t made a peep. They’ve also been remarkably silent on other donations to Clinton’s Priorities USA SuperPac, including $5 million from Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl; $2.3 million from Laurie Woods; and $2.5 million from Donald Sussman.

And I shall join the liberals and progressives in their chorus of silence, because, unlike them, your writer prefers intellectual consistency. So, you go, George Soros! And, likewise, Mr. and Ms. Saban, Ms. Woods and Mr. Sussman. Last, but not least, let’s hear it for the Koch brothers! Because each and every one of the above-listed donors are exercising their First Amendment free-speech rights, which were girded by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

However, liberals and progressives don’t see it that way when donations don’t go their way. For example the left-leaning investors affiliated with religious shareholder activists As You Sow seemingly can’t abide corporate donations in the political game when it’s their respective ox that’s gored, namely anyone who disagrees with their views on climate change, social issues, genetically modified organisms and, you guessed it, Citizens United.

Here’s an example from an AYS proxy resolution submitted to DuPont:

“Using corporate funds to influence any political election” for purposes of this proposal, includes any direct or indirect contribution using corporate funds that is intended to influence the e of an election or referendum. This includes independent expenditures, munications, and issue advocacy that can reasonably be interpreted as in support or opposition of a specific candidate or ballot measure. The policy should include measures, to the greatest extent practical, to prevent trade associations or non-profit corporations from channeling pany’s contributions or membership dues to influence the e of any election or referendum….

“Corporate money in politics is a controversial subject. Since the high-profile U.S. Supreme Court Case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporate contributions to election campaigns have skyrocketed. Experts have estimated that a record-breaking $6.3 billion was spent in the 2012 electoral cycle, an increase of nearly 15% from 2008. These developments are deeply unpopular among the U.S. public across party lines, and consequently panies to considerable risks associated with attempts to influence controversial election es.

Before AYS can lift themselves from their self-imposed rhetorical fainting couch, they might want to read last weekend’s Wall Street Journal wherein Bradley Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, sets the record straight on campaign financing:

Hillary Clinton has tons of cash, but she can’t shake off Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump keeps threatening to spend his own money, but he hasn’t had to use much of it. He’s leading the Republican field, feasting on free media coverage, while spending a fraction of what his rivals, and super PACs promoting them, have spent. If his rivals hadn’t been able raise large sums the GOP race would probably be over—Mr. Trump’s celebrity, name recognition and charisma would already have carried the day.

Apparently oblivious to the failure of “big money” to dictate the race, the goo-goos—the good-government crowd—have cranked up the same theme they use every election year. “We must,” they say, “have campaign finance reform.” We must “get money out of politics.” The Supreme Court must reverse its 2010 decision in Citizens United and allow “reasonable” regulation of campaign finance.

I might add that AYS and its partners in the anti-Citizens United crusade never mention limits on celebrity endorsements for candidates. Certainly having Bruce Springsteen in his camp presented some lift to President Obama in elections past, I would imagine. There must be somebody out there who can put a dollar value on the Boss making personal appearances on Obama’s behalf. Not that I care – I really don’t – but then I’m consistent that way. The goo-goos at AYS? Not so much.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Writing Tips for Your On Call in Culture Blog Entry
“Think, Think, Think” –Pooh It’s always hard to sit down and write. There are a million distractions that tempt us away from the keyboard or notepad and entangle us in the details of life. Not that these details are bad. In fact, as munity focused on being On Call in Culture, many of those details are the whole purpose. But before you get out there and answer the calling that God has put on your life as a dentist, professor,...
Jacoby, D’Souza debate Religion in the Public Square
Susan Jacoby and Dinesh D’Souza met here in Grand Rapids at Fountain Street Church on Thursday, April 26, to debate the merits of religion in public discourse. The debate, co-sponsored by The Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, was titled, “Is Christianity Good for American Politics?” Susan Jacoby is program director at The Center for Inquiry and author of The Age of American Unreason and Alger Hiss and The Battle for History. She argued for the...
Are Young Millennials Less Religious or Simply Young?
Joe Carter recently posted a summary of a new studyconducted jointly by Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs that shows that college-aged Millennials (18-24 year olds) “report significant levels of movement from the religious affiliation of their childhood, mostly toward identifying as religiously unaffiliated.” He also noted the tendency of college-aged Millennials to be more politically liberal. Just yesterday, the same study was highlighted by Robert Jones of the Washington Post,...
The Heritage Guide to the Constitution
Our friends at the Heritage Foundation have created an invaluable online tool for learning about the U.S. Constitution: The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the Framers and as applied in contemporary law. Its particular aim is to provide lawmakers with a means to defend their role and to fulfill their responsibilities in our constitutional order. Yet while the Guide will provide a...
Samuel Gregg: Beyond Conservatism and Libertarianism
On Public Discourse, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg addresses the “considerable fractures” that continue to divide conservative and libertarian positions on significant policy issues as well as on “deeper philosophical questions.” He pulls apart the “often tortuously drawn distinctions” surrounding the political labels and then offers some reasons why the “often unconscious but sometimes deliberate embrace of philosophical skepticism by some conservatives and libertarians should be challenged.” Perceptive critics of skepticism have illustrated that the concern to be reasonable and...
Was Thomas More a proto-communist?
In Utopia, many modern intellectuals say Sir Thomas More advocates an ideal political and social order without private petition, citizens quarreling over worldly possessions, poverty and other “evils” supposedly brought on by a market-based society. At least that is the way social liberals, including left-leaning Christians, tend to interpret this great saint’s 1516 literary masterpiece, believing the English Catholic statesman’s work presents his vision of an ideal monwealth modeled on the early Church (even ifthose munist experiments failed). Recently, Istituto...
Why Religious Liberty Is Important for Institutions
Is religious liberty only for individuals or also for institutions? As Ryan Messmore explains, America’s founders thought that the Constitution’s “first freedom” is for both: True liberty must take account of the relational aspect of human nature. And truereligious liberty, in particular, must entail the freedom to exercise one’s faith in the various relationships and joint activities of day-to-day life. In other words, religious freedom applies to participation in institutions. Each one of those institutions—our particular school, church, workplace, etc.—takes...
Politics, Ideology, and the Gospel
Earlier this week the Christian Post published an article with some statements from me about evangelical (and more broadly Christian) debates about the federal budget proposals. In the piece, “Evangelical Christians Agree, Disagree on Budget Priorities,” I said that The Church, the Christian faith, is not to identify with a single political order, or structure, party or platform. It does show something of the dynamism and vitality of the Christian faith that, in the midst of what the world thinks...
Video: Chuck Colson speaks at the Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII Conference
On October 31, 1998, Charles Colson came to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to deliver the closing address at Acton’s “The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII” conference, sponsored jointly with Calvin Seminary. “This is a momentous time for the Church as we reflect on two thousand years since the birth of Christ, and as we approach the millenium. And the question, I suspect, that all of us are asking and that the Church should be asking across...
Chuck Colson’s life was ‘worth emulating’
Acton University alum R.J. Moeller looks back on Chuck Colson’s life-changing influence. R.J. produces a popular podcast for the Values & Capitalism project at the American Enterprise Institute and also works as the director munications for radio talk show host Dennis Prager and his Prager University. Moeller: Since embarking on a career in writing, podcasting, and anything else related to the articulation of a God-fearing, free market-defending worldview that can pay my bills> Whenever I’m asked, “What do you want...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved