In a world of seriousness, a breath (er, brief?) of fresh air

*First appeared in the March 19, 2014 edition of the Laurel Chronicle

Every once in a blue moon, something comes around that’s simply worth sharing as is. This column highlights one of those instances where I inform you, with limited commentary, about a very funny (yet incredibly important) issue.

The Cato Institute recently filed an amicus brief regarding Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, a case involving an Ohio state law that prohibits false statements in elections.

As described on Cato’s blog: “Believe it or not, it’s illegal in Ohio to lie about politicians, for politicians to lie about other politicians, or for politicians to lie about themselves. That is, it violates an election law – this isn’t anything related to slander or libel, which has higher standards of proof for public figures – to make ‘false statements’ in campaign-related contexts.”

Because of a scuffle-turned-lawsuit between a pro-life advocacy group (the Susan B. Anthony List) and a then-Rep. Steven Driehaus, the constitutionality of this unique Ohio law has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

And that’s where it gets interesting. Did I mention “legendary satirist” and Ohio-native P.J. O’Rourke joins Cato as a fellow amicus on the brief?

A brief bio on O’Rourke: He was born and raised in Toledo and has been “writing funny things” since the 1960s on topics as varied as wars, riots, politics, cars, etiquette, economics, and, now, free speech issues.

To the question presented before the Supreme Court – “Can a state government criminalize political statements that are less than 100% truthful?” – O’Rourke has quite the response.

But don’t take my word for it. Here are the opening lines:

“I am not a crook.”

“Read my lips: no new taxes!”

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

“Mission accomplished.”

“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”

“While George Washington may have been incapable of telling a lie, his successors have not had this same integrity. The campaign promise (and its subsequent violation), as well as disparaging statements about one’s opponent (whether true, mostly true, mostly not true, or entirely fantastic), are cornerstones of American democracy. Indeed, mocking and satire are as old as America.”

The brief continues its discussion of “truthiness” in similar fashion, asking where we would be, after all, “without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we’d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn’t administered quickly enough to secular-humanist professors of Chicano studies.”

On a more serious note, if you can call it that, the brief explains that laws like the one in Ohio criminalize “false” speech and do nothing to replace “truthiness, satire, and snark with high-minded ideas and ‘just the facts.’ Instead, they chill speech such that spin becomes silence.” More importantly, it continues, Ohio’s ban of “lies and damn lies” is incompatible with the protections offered by the First Amendment.

Speech that is inflammatory and insulting is more likely to produce a response from candidates, “thus making the back-and-forth of politics a self-correcting marketplace of ideas – except, of course, when candidates can tattle to the government, which then takes away their toys speech.”

In its argument that Ohio’s law ultimately weakens the vibrancy of political discourse, the brief suggests hopes that these laws will stop the lies, insults, and truthiness are “Pollyannish” at best.

Not only do these hopes “stand in the face of all political history, [they disregard] the facts that, in politics, truths are felt as much as they are known.” When a Republican, for example, calls Obama a socialist, he is “feeling a truth more than thinking one.”

You get the idea. The brief in its entirety is worth the read, not only for its humor but also its very good points about the role of satire in political discourse.

Said differently, the First Amendment protects all speech, but, even in its absence, “no government agency could do a better job policing political honesty than the myriad personalities and entities who expose charlatans, mock liars, lambaste arrogance, and unmask truthiness for a living.”

Well said, guys. Very well said.