Timur Kuran’s 1989 Public Choice article “Sparks and Prairie Fires” argues that unanticipated revolutions are the result of what he calls “preference falsification.” When ordinary citizens get utility from publicly expressing support for the status quo, overall publicly expressed sentiment will strongly diverge from overall private sentiment. That is, most citizens will deny their true preferences and publicly support the status quo. As a result, relatively small shocks can cause expected public sentiment to swing wildly away from the status quo. When expected public sentiment swings wildly, so does expressed public sentiment, and you get a revolution.

A crucial, explicit assumption in Kuran’s article is that governments do not have time to adapt to the wild swings in sentiment. No matter what Mubarak offers the Egyptians, no one believes that he will be able to change enough quickly enough to satisfy the new public sentiment. Even if he were willing to give in to every substantive demand made of him, promises to do so would not be credible.

This gives us a strong argument for freedom of political speech. When the divergence between expressed public sentiment and true private sentiment is minimized, a political regime will be at its most stable. When there is a change in private sentiment, if the change is expressed publicly, then the regime can have time to gradually adapt to keep its actions in line with what its citizens demand, minimizing the likelihood of a revolution.

It’s worth reviewing some of the ways that freedom of political speech is impaired in the United States today. First, the Smith Act makes it a federal crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. Though to my knowledge there have not been any prosecutions for violating this provision of the Smith Act in recent decades, this law, which was used to support McCarthyism, is still on the books. It’s likely that people think it would be destabilizing to repeal this section of the Smith Act, but the argument above suggests the contrary.

Second, there are cultural impairments to some political speech. Many people face social pressure to hew to a particular political line. This is unfortunate and perhaps inevitable, though to the extent that each of us can be more tolerant, that would ameliorate the situation.

Third, in light of the cultural obstacles to true freedom of political speech, it’s regrettable that the US government does not recognize a right to anonymous political speech. In the Citizens United case, only Justice Thomas wrote in favor of the right of groups to produce political material without disclosing their donors.

I don’t mean to suggest that the US is on the verge of an Egypt-style revolution due to its suppression of political speech, but nevertheless, in the long run, an open society is a stable society. Perhaps one reason that the American regime has lasted as long as it has is its tradition of relatively free speech. Now is as good a time as any to improve on that tradition.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

To this, Alito, J. was clearly seen contorting his face and mouthing the words “not true.” And it wasn’t true. As Linda Greenhouse notes, the Court did not overrule a century of law. And according to PolitiFact, the court did not reach the question of free speech for foreign corporations:

The majority opinion, authored by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, maintained that the court was not specifically overturning this barrier to foreign campaign spending, essentially saying that it was outside the scope of the opinion.

“We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process,” the majority wrote.

While Obama’s statement was indeed not true, I wish it were true. There is nothing pernicious about foreign corporations being able to buy TV ads making a case for how Americans ought to vote. The idea of a corporate nationality is murky to begin with. Should the nationality be determined by where the corporation’s headquarters are located? By where it does the most business? By the nationalities of its shareholders, of which none may constitute a majority?

But more importantly, the case for free speech is persuasive not because it gives people the right to speak in a vacuum, but because it gives people the right to listen to whatever speakers they wish. For the government to hold that I do not have the right to listen to what foreign corporations have to say, but that this is nevertheless consistent with the principle of free speech is shockingly Orwellian. Even if foreign corporations want to argue that the US government is evil and should be overthrown, what is the harm in that? If they are wrong, I can ignore them, and if they are right, I would want to know.