Help. American democracy is trapped in a sealed box built by the Supreme Court. As the Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission demonstrates, five Justices are slowly but surely pumping the air out of the box. The box has four walls built by the Justices in Buckley v. Valeo—(1) an insistence that spending money in a political campaign is always the exact legal equivalent of “pure” speech, no matter how high the spending goes; (2) a rejection of the idea that preserving a modicum of political equality justifies placing any limit on campaign spending, even at stratospheric levels; (3) an insistence that “direct” campaign spending has more First Amendment protection than “indirect” campaign contributions; and (4) a refusal to admit that unlimited independent spending poses the same risk of “corruption” or the “appearance of corruption” posed by campaign contributions.