Sarah Palin, the media, and the First Amendment

The Constitution’s First Amendment clearly and properly protects the press from government intrusion. However, does the First Amendment allow reporters to ignore laws, or guarantee their access to a citizen’s every move? Ask Sarah Palin.

Palin recently made news for reasons other than her unusual version of Paul Revere’s ride. The controversy centered on her One Nation Tour, whose bus drivers apparently didn’t win any safe driving awards. Palin’s drivers ran red lights, recklessly exceeded speed limits, and changed lanes without signaling.

Ignoring traffic laws isn’t best practice, but it’s hardly unique. Drive a mile on the nation’s highways and you’ll witness similar, or worse, disregard for traffic laws. The question is, why reporters are so familiar with the One Nation Tour’s driving habits? If you answered, “The reporters were doing the same things,” take a gold star.

Reporters committed the same traffic violations for which they criticized Palin’s troupe. Even while describing the experience as “harrowing,” reporters remained quite blind to their own role in creating dangerous situations. Even in today’s warped social climate, where traditional standards are deemed passé, two wrongs still won’t make a right. Reporters are no more immune from traffic laws than are Palin’s bus drivers.

However, reporters excused their part in creating a “rolling menace” as the price required for keeping pace with Palin. Palin’s advisors failed to divulge the tour’s schedule. Lacking the itinerary, reporters had no alternative but to trail the One Nation Tour at all cost. What a load of bull!

The lack of an itinerary provides no excuse for reporters to exacerbate the traffic dangers blamed on Palin. In fact, the media is just as guilty as the Palin entourage, if not more. The media’s zeal to cover Palin is predicated not on idealistic notions of journalistic integrity or public disclosure but on the hope she will commit an embarrassing faux pas. What’s more, the media has no right of access to Sarah Palin’s itinerary.

“But the fourth estate has an obligation to keep tabs on politicians, government figures, and candidates,” journalists may counter. I agree; that’s why the Constitution recognizes the free press. The media should scrutinize everyone who fills, or seeks to fill, public positions. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.”

But Palin isn’t filling a public trust. She is no longer the Republican nominee for Vice President, the Governor of Alaska, or the Mayor of Wasilla. Sarah Palin hasn’t declared her interest in any public office either. She’s a media personality no doubt. But she isn’t a public official whose decisions can directly affect our liberty. Anyone who patronizes her does so voluntarily. Therefore, reporters have as much right to your local barber’s itinerary as they do Sarah Palin’s.

It’s truly amazing the lengths to which the media will go to cover every movement of a woman they routinely label as the world’s biggest idiot. If Sarah Palin is as dumb and irrelevant as the media claims, why cover her tour at all? Why not simply let her go her way in anonymity? Such an approach, if adopted, might cause reporters to miss an opportunity to portray Palin as the total loon they believe her to be. No wonder she didn’t grant journalists access to her itinerary.

Reporting on the whereabouts of celebrities -- and Palin is a celebrity -- isn’t the reason the First Amendment protects the free press. The media’s right to investigate politicians and bureaucrats who directly affect America’s liberty is unquestionable. Should Palin again seek or assume a public trust, she’ll become fair game. Until then the media enjoys no First Amendment access to her agenda and no right of any kind to mimic poor driving habits.

Statehouses are the key to restoring constitutional government

It’s true that a change in federal administration will prompt a disgruntled few to dream of revolutionary immortality. Equally true, opponents will use any questionable statement or action to paint the “revolutionaries” as violent, half-witted zealots. Welcome to America.

There’s no shortage of such right-wing resentment toward government, most of it justified. Also in large supply are opinionated leftists armed with word processors, a penchant for misinformation and a desire to mischaracterize any opinion with which they disagree.

Last year the decidedly left-wing blog Crooks and Liars reported a “million man militia” march on Washington. Typically, the writer belittled the event as a gathering of paranoid right-wing lunatics determined to shoot something.

If this march occurred it must have went off without a hitch. In fact, reality has spoken and the pro-freedom rallies that have taken place have been entirely peaceful, contrary to the leftist’s dire warnings. No one has invaded the Capital or tarred and feathered a congressman, as much as they may deserve it.

So the question isn’t whether America’s revolutionary spark should be revived but in what manner. We are a people born of rebellion and nurtured on revolution. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote that the people have the right to abolish any government that’s hostile to basic liberty. Several states are taking Jefferson’s words to heart, including a group of Oklahoma legislators who are mulling the creation of a state militia to resist federal encroachments on their sovereignty.

The usefulness of such militias is debatable, and will surely draw howls of protest from the left. But the idea of using state legislatures to counter the federal government’s fiscal irresponsibility and blatant disregard for constitutional limitations is workable.

The Founders themselves would be pleased, as evidenced in the language of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Ninth recognizes federal authority but explicitly denies overt power to the central government in all areas not specifically delegated. The Tenth declares that all powers not expressly granted to the United States, or prohibited to the states, remain with the states and the people.

Our forefathers obviously intended a federal government that served the states and the people, not one that ruled over both. For the states to “delegate” any powers to the central government, via the constitution, they must retain all powers not granted to the United States.

States have previously exercised this option. Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions (1798) decried what was viewed as the central government’s unconstitutional assumption of power. Jefferson noted that any federal adventure into areas not authorized was an assault on state sovereignty. Therefore, the states had every right to declare those extensions “void and of no force.”
For example, commenting on the over-extension of federal authority, Mr. Jefferson wrote in the Eight Resolution:

Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy . . . every State has a natural right . . . to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits.

This is the outlet for our revolutionary fervor. No less than our third president endorsed state nullification of federal excursions into unauthorized areas. The left’s portrayal of limited government activists as lunatics is nullified as well and talk of armed revolt is at best premature.

Flippant references to armed resistance momentarily soothe the soul. However, it also fuels the left-wing cranks and propagandists--like Crooks and Liars--who love to paint limited government proponents as violent nutcases. We owe it to the Founders and their experiment in self government to exhaust all prudent options before considering drastic and uncertain steps.

The return of constitutional government begins in the Statehouses. State legislatures can draft resolutions rendering unconstitutional federal intrusions upon personal liberty and state sovereignty “void, and of no force.” States can refuse to enforce unconstitutional measures within their borders.

Nullification is a worthwhile, peaceful alternative to revolutionary rhetoric. Let’s see what it produces before storming Congress with torches and pitchforks.

Taking the high road with Thomas Jefferson

Anyone who makes their opinions public, in print or online, can expect to receive periodic hate mail. That’s how the game is played. Just as the columnist attempts to provoke the reader, so does the hate mailer desire a reaction from the columnist. It’s tempting to oblige.

I received such an email recently. It was self-congratulatory and totally anonymous. I should’ve just let it ride, like I do the other occasional hate mails. But, for some inexplicable reason, I replied to the message. As stated, it’s difficult to remain silent when a reader invites abuse.

For example, this hate mailer informed me that my “southern bubba ass” will soon be a minority and my sole source of income will be cleaning toilets with my tongue. According to my new fan, such work would be perfect for an “inbred miscreant” like me.

I replied to the sender, which was taken as a sign that he had “gotten under my thin bubba skin.”

Witty, no?

It would’ve been easy to use this space to settle the score. I could’ve pointed out that it was he who initiated the contact. Had I not gotten under his thin skin I wouldn’t have heard from him to begin with. I could’ve pointed out that the use of “bubba” carries the same connotations when directed toward a white male as the word “nigger” has when used toward blacks.

Furthermore, I could easily prove that my mother isn’t a prostitute. I could point to the simplicity of a mind that considers it an intellectual insult to “dedicate a big, brown turd” to me. And I could close with the obvious conclusion that “identifying” oneself as a long-dead Civil War general (William T. Sherman) is the same as remaining anonymous.

But as I prepared to write the column I had a change of heart. In an instant I realized my folly. I had forgotten one of my favorite lessons from Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson once said that a wise man shouldn’t argue with a fool, a passing stranger might not know which one is which.

Remembering Jefferson’s sage advice was like a sign from God, and perhaps it was. The easy solution, the easy reaction, would be to attack my attacker. But what purpose would it serve, other than to provide momentary satisfaction?

“General Sherman” had already done more to make himself look foolish than I could do in ten thousand words. In fact, rather than anger, I felt sympathy for the general. What a small man.

His response was typically shallow. Such is the leftist way. They rely on no fact; they rely on no principle. Their main weapons are sophomoric invectives and petty jealousies. It’s sad, really. How can a meaningful debate occur when one side is armed with logic, reason and a rational outlook while the other resorts to talking points, sound bites and gutter insults?

There are two lessons to be learned from this episode. First, when confronted with ignorance the best recourse is remaining silent. Or, if silence is impossible, respond with sound arguments. It will surely confuse the hate mailer, likely sending him or her into a tail-chasing frenzy. Exchanging witticisms is futile. The hate mailer has no wit, no fact, no logic and little--if any--useful purpose.

Second, the left is actually quite pitiful. The rank and file leftist has drunk deeply from the kool-aid. They don’t think; they feel and react as indoctrinated. Collectivism is their religion, which they will defend beyond all rational thought. And just as sure as if Jim Jones himself were leading them, they will devise their own destruction. But perhaps the saddest part is that such a large number of our neighbors have abandoned their intellect for the pabulum common to the leftist ideology.

Mr. Jefferson was correct. Never argue with a fool.