{"id":17959,"date":"2013-05-17T11:28:22","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17959"},"modified":"2013-05-17T11:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:32:46","slug":"liberals-irs-scandal-shows-need-for-less-citizen-privacy-not-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17959\/liberals-irs-scandal-shows-need-for-less-citizen-privacy-not-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals:  IRS Scandal Shows Need for Less Citizen Privacy, Not More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So the IRS singled out conservative citizens and organizations for persecution, while giving liberal counterparts a &#8220;pass,&#8221; in the words of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2013\/05\/14\/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups\/2158831\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>USA Today<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As we note this week in our commentary &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/52-campaign-finance\/1847-the-irs-campaign-finance-and-freedom-of-association\" target=\"_blank\">The IRS, Campaign Finance and Freedom of Association<\/a>,&#8221; the scandal proves the inherent danger of federal micromanagement of American citizens&#8217; private political activity.\u00a0 As the Supreme Court observed in <em>NAACP v. Alabama<\/em> (1958), revelation of an organization&#8217;s members or supporters exposes them to reprisal, harassment and threat.\u00a0 We now have a perfect illustration.<\/p>\n<p>According to many liberals, however, the problem isn&#8217;t too <em>little<\/em> citizen privacy but too <em>much<\/em>.\u00a0 Already during today&#8217;s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS practices, liberals such as Richard Neal (D &#8211; Massachusetts) and Charlie Rangel (D &#8211; New York) have asserted that <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14789\/brevity-is-the-soul-of-sound-jurisprudence-supreme-court-strengthens-free-speech\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Citizens United<\/em><\/a> is the real problem.\u00a0 Apparently, forcing citizens to disclose even more of their First Amendment activity to government will transform abusive IRS bureaucrats from perpetrators into saints.<\/p>\n<p>Their agenda is wholly irrational, but all too predictable.\u00a0\u00a0 We must fully investigate and expose the IRS abuse, but we must also ensure that the longer-term takeaway is more individual freedom for American citizens, not less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So the IRS singled out conservative citizens and organizations for persecution, while giving liberal counterparts a &#8220;pass,&#8221; in the words of USA Today. As we note this week in our commentary &#8220;The IRS, Campaign Finance and Freedom of Association,&#8221; the scandal proves the inherent danger of federal micromanagement of American citizens&#8217; private political activity.\u00a0 As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[928,735,28],"class_list":["post-17959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-conservative","tag-irs","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17962,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17959\/revisions\/17962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}