George Will takes on John McCain’s disparagement of First Amendment rights as only George Will can.

The way he describes McCain’s contradictory belief that government is inherently corrupt but is the best agent to regulate speech brings to mind the mafia’s protection racket. Like the mafia, John McCain strolls up to a shop owner’s door, and informs him he is going to have some trouble. But he can avoid that trouble if he just hands over a little here and a little there. In the mafia’s case, it is money. In John McCain’s case, it is free speech. Then in the form of campaign finance regulation, McCain and his allies provide the protection from the problem they fashioned. But the only one truly protected in any protection racket is the extortionist. Incumbents stay incumbents.