We all have the freedom of money-speech, but only the rich get heard.

Last week's Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, which lifted aggregate limits on how much political donors can give, was not the most clear-cut conservative victory ever. Elected Democrats are officially unhappy, but their fundraisers won't mind the extra cash.

Yet the decision is clearly a setback for liberals—as distinct from Democratic party interests—and not just because other people don't tend to be rich people's top policy concern. The Court found that the government's "strong interest" in fighting real or apparent corruption is actually less strong (absent actual quid pro quos) than a citizen's First Amendment right to influence elections with great piles of money. The fact that most of us don't have the means to do this—and thus won't have the same voice as the wealthy few—is not a problem the majority is strongly interested in fighting. So this is among other things a win for the conservative preference for equality of opportunity rather than of outcome.

In other words, all citizens—not just the rich ones!—are free to exercise their right to money-speech as much as they want. If we find our voices aren't being heard, well, we might just need to talk richer. Equality of opportunity to let your money talk in an election means that democracy is preserved in theory, even if our system keeps stumbling toward oligarchy in practice.