Bill Bennett: “the basis of the free speech position of the Constitution of the United States. If I may respond to the Senator from…”

“the basis of the free speech position of the Constitution of the United States. If I may respond to the Senator from Kentucky by quoting from James Madison and the Federalist Papers that support exactly what he said, they didn't use the term ``special interest'' back in Madison's century. The term of art then was ``faction.'' This is what James Madison had to say: By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens. That sounds like the definition of a special interest group to me. Madison goes on to say: There are . . . two methods of removing the causes of faction: The one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire. Certainly we do not want to eliminate air that we cannot breathe in the name of stopping a fire that might occur, and we do not want to eliminate liberty.”