The Silence of the Lambs

The United States Supreme Court recently, by its ubiquitous 5-4 vote, struck down a provision of federal election law that forbids corporations and unions from spending their gains, ill-gotten or otherwise, to support or oppose candidates for federal office. Apparently the majority of the Justices felt that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would have wanted business interests to have unlimited influence on the electoral process in America. I don't even think that Alexander Hamilton, poor shot that he was, would support that conclusion. I must confess to not having read the text of the Court's reasoning on the matter, and probably won't, since it would likely either dangerously elevate my blood pressure or put me in a coma, or both, so I may not know what I am talking about. On the other hand, the Supreme Court has not recently impressed me with either their legal acumen or philosophical wisdom.

I'm not going to bore us by generating a primer on the legal concept of "corporate personhood", but it certainly makes sense to provide that commercial entities be able to acquire and hold property, enter into contracts and obtain licenses and permits. It also certainly makes good sense for there to be a protection of commercial speech such that goods and services can be made known to potential consumers, but affording the same right of political speech to amorphous and malleable commercial phantoms as are enjoyed by real living and breathing human-beings is a bit troubling to me. If you are a two-legged Homo Sapien (or, pardon my insensitivity, an amputee) and you engage in inflammatory or abusive political rhetoric, I can punch you in the nose and know full well I got the right guy. You may return the punch or have me arrested, but that's freedom. On the other hand, if a corporation talks nonsense, all I can do is throw a stale cabbage at their local sales representative, who may not even agree with the corporate position. The lack of personal accountability attendant to corporate persons makes them poor candidates to pervasively broadcast their corporate opinions with the massive resources available to them. Freedom without responsibility is a teenager, and we all know how that works.

Corporations are extremely diverse and have a broad range of concerns and objectives, but for the most part, they want to make some money. I have no objection in principle to making money; I'd like to make some myself someday, but the economic benefit of a corporation and the public benefit of a nation may diverge dramatically. Even the most hardened capitalist would not suggest that corporations should control the government; that's called Fascism , unlike when citizens control the government, which is called democracy, or sometimes a cluster-fuck, or both. However, I am still way more inclined to trust the aggregate instincts of my fellow Americans, no matter how apathetic, ignorant, distracted or flatulent they may be, than the denizens of the corporate board room. I read an editorial on the issue, the source of which I have forgotten, which made the very interesting point, which I shall liberate for the use of the people, that we have (and I paraphrase) no idea what sort of madmen, perverts and foreigners may comprise the boards of the various corporations. While I am the last person to raise the paranoid specter of xenophobia, I am also not completely naive about the ways of the world and what people will do for money. With flesh and blood American citizens, however they come by said citizenship, we can at least start with the tenuous assumption that they want to promote the best interests of the nation, even if they may be too dim-witted or filled with the spirit to recognize what is best. Corporations are increasingly multi-national and have no allegiance to anything but their own self-interests. I'm not saying this is morally wrong, I'm just suggesting that Toyota of North America, Inc. may not support legislators who want to bail out Detroit. Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view, but I really don't want corporations helping to decide who gets elected in this country.

Even if you're not prepared to accept my jingoistic and provincial scare-mongering over foreign influence, the corporate record on racial and gender equality, the environment, truth in advertising and generally responsible corporate citizenship is pretty crappy. The corporate board rooms that are not full of inscrutable Orientals or eastern European Mafioso are predominately the province of white, American males over 40. Being a white America male over 40, I can tell you how limited a perspective you can sometimes have. I'm not saying that these individuals are not entitled to an equal voice in the political life of America, but with corporate resources at their disposal the volume of their political speech is increased to where it runs the risk of drowning out us poor middle-class slobs with our $25.00 campaign contributions. Certainly this is not what Patrick Henry had in mind.

I am, after all, just a humble wormhole repairman and not a Constitutional scholar, but the Federal Government is given the power to regulate interstate commerce by Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. Article I, Section 18, Clause 18 gives the Congress the power to make laws that let them do all the stuff the Constitution says they have the power to do, so what am I missing? Corporations can't vote; they can't run for office or die on foreign battlefields. They don't have life, can't enjoy liberty or pursue happiness, and since we are their creator, they are endowed only with the rights we give them. The Libertarian author James Bovard is quoted as saying that "democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner". Thanks to the ineffable wisdom of our Supreme Court, you can now make that three wolves and a sheep.