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Let me say at the outset, some of my prior beliefs. First, I believe in the marketplace of ideas and think that more speech is generally better than less speech. I believe the Founders shared this belief and enshrined it in the “no law” component of the First Amendment. I believe this is especially true for speech about politics. Why else would we allow the Nazis to march in Skokie? Other countries don’t let Nazi’s march because they (rightfully) view their ideas as repugnant. But we let them march. We do so because we are more confident in our citizens’ ability to know right from wrong, to look beyond rhetoric for substance, and to be able to weigh competing claims of truth. If we didn’t trust the people to make decisions based on all available information, if we didn’t trust the people to be able to filter speech according to its source and content, if we didn’t trust the people to know what is good for them, we wouldn’t let the Nazi’s march. But we let them march.

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I feel no great urgency to revise the Guidelines.  True enough, they’re more of an analytical thought experiment than an accurate description of how merger review takes place in the agencies, but who’s really fooled?  Perhaps some business people think that the Guidelines are a computer program waiting for the introduction of the relevant data to spit out the answer, but most sophisticated executives contemplating a merger will understand that the Guidelines are just a beginning point for conversation.

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