To parody a children’s hand game, “I don’t want to pick up the phone no more, more, more. There’s a big fat telemarketer on the phone, phone, phone. He’ll grab me by the ear and talk me into tears. I don’t want to pick up the phone no more, more, more.”

America has spoken. Can you hear me now? More than 52 million Americans who signed up for the national do-not-call list don’t want telemarketers calling them.

But unfortunately, U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham’s decision says the Federal Trade Commission’s do-not-call list is unconstitutional because it violates telemarketers’ freedom of speech. That decision is absurd.

Americans are not listening to these calls anyway, so no freedom of speech is being violated.

Let’s define freedom of speech for this court. It means Americans can say or print almost anything they want as long as it is not slanderous or libelous and does not bring malicious harm to another party.

This definition says nothing about people having the right to call people on the phone. It says nothing about people having the right to bug people in the privacy of their homes with phone calls during dinner.

The list is respecting Americans’ right to choose who calls and who doesn’t. It’s just like blocking certain numbers because of prank calls. Or like getting a restraining order from a court because a pesky stalker keeps on calling even when they are repeatedly told to stop.

The clever 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver temporarily blocked the lower court’s decision, but there is still a battle over this immensely helpful list.

The Direct Marketing Association, the largest telemarketing association, said the decline in calls shows that government enforcement is unnecessary, and the industry can police itself. They don’t want the government poking their noses in it because they don’t want the fines that could be levied on them if they call a person on the list. Fines could reach amounts as high as $11,000.

But if the telemarketers could police themselves, then it wouldn’t have been necessary to take such drastic measures as creating this list. And certainly the Federal Communications Commission, which stepped in while the FTC was restrained , wouldn’t have received around 2,000 complaints since the list went into effect Oct. 1.

This list is not just helpful to many Americans who don’t want to be bothered while eating. It also helps telemarketers by keeping them from wasting their time on people who don’t want to listen to them and who are probably not going to buy anything anyway.

The courts and the telemarketers need to let the FTC get on with it because as the parody goes, “I don’t want telemarketers calling me no more, more, more.” They can ring the rest of the population that isn’t on the do-not-call list and leave alone the many Americans who had the sense to place themselves on the list.