I wonder if others are concerned, as I am, about the government serving as the agent of individuals' preferences and prejudices about speech they like and dislike. This concern, it seems, would apply to the current version of the do not call registry, and more importantly it would apply to an alternative version that might give the individual a menu of choices from which to choose. I'm troubled by both versions.
I understand that the government does serve as the agent of individual rights and interests -- e.g. the right to property (trespass), to quietude (noise ordinances, et al), to be free of discrimination -- and that some conventional first amendment analysis may suggest that there are no problems with the government serving such a role as long as it does not discriminate and acts out of non-speech-related interests. But it is nevertheless a troubling posture for government to be in, especially if government's purpose would be to facilitate people's "right" not to hear, a right with uncertain roots in the first amendment theory. It is a posture that seems inconsistent with the idea that the first amendment protects a field of robust, wide open, and uninhibited speech. If I want to impose my own epistemological filter, that's fine, perhaps, but should government help me to do so?
Randy Bezanson Univ. of Iowa
