Are speech police now part of Montana politics?

Throughout history, totalitarian regimes employed police to monitor the speech of their own citizens. They knew that controlling government required controlling dissent. Any dissent was prosecuted, because they believed controlling speech would also control the real threat…thought.

Our Founding Fathers understood this historical threat to democracy. They anticipated the need for peaceful, periodic government change. So they enshrined, as the first right of individuals against their government in the Bill of Rights, the freedom to assemble, associate, speak, and challenge. People today think our elections are dirtier than ever. Political historians know otherwise.

In recent times, countries adverse to democracy have maintained the legacy of speech police. Look at Russia, North Korea, Syria, and beyond. There, dissent leads to jail, or worse.

But there is now a move afoot in America to criminalize political speech. The big corporate and union powers that benefit from bigger government know that dissent must be stifled, lest the seeds of reform take root.

Here in Montana, a “bipartisan” group wants a “dark money” initiative to be placed on the 2014 ballot. They say they just want the disclosure of the sources of all political activity (speech). Absent in their proposal is a requirement for truth. Notably, they have kept their source of funding anonymous.

But duplicity and arbitrariness are the hallmarks of speech police. While regulation may seem like a good idea, the problem is who gets to appoint the discretionary sheriff?

We have just witnessed politically biased Obama IRS officials holding conservative groups to different standards. In Montana, the state speech cop has picked up where IRS’s Lois Lerner left off. Appointed by Gov. Bullock so late he could not be confirmed by the state Senate, Democrat partisan Jon Motl is now on a crusade to penalize conservative citizens, including two of my Gallatin Valley neighbors. They simply dared to run for the Legislature in 2010.  All while Motl turns a blind eye to complaints against the similar tactics of Democrats. To maintain status quo big government, they must gag and silence any dissent.

Like others, I don’t like common political tactics. I was anonymously attacked in both of my elections… by a corporation in 2006, and by union front groups in 2010. It is not pleasant. But, as anticipated in the Constitution, it is the price we pay for a spirited contest of ideas, and democratic change.

Wittich, a Bozeman Republican, represents SD35.