George Will takes on the University of Montana here. The school, in all its McCain-Feingold glory, limits student government campaign spending to $100 per candidate. When Aaron Flint ran for student senate, he violated the limit by spending $214.69. Thus, the university removed him from office and Flint took the school to court. He lost in the lower court and is on his way, as Will states, “to the epicenter of novel argumentation, the reliably liberal and frequently reversed 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Will correctly identifies the motivation behind the university’s urge to regulate:
Restrictions on freedoms, and especially
freedoms as fundamental as those of the First Amendment, require
serious justifications. So the question is: To what pressing problem
did the university’s $100 limit respond? Or is it merely another
manifestation of the regnant liberalism common on most campuses — the
itch to boss people around?
Will’s conclusion:
If the Supreme Court takes Flint’s appeal,
it will see that the University of Montana is indeed teaching students
a lesson about politics — the pernicious lesson that politics should
be conducted under tight restrictions on advocacy. The university is
preventing students from learning such essential civic skills as how to
raise and allocate political money for advertising and organizing. Thus
do the grossly anti-constitutional premises of McCain-Feingold seep
through society, poisoning the practice of democracy at all levels.
