How the West Was Won...

"Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy -- it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people -- political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,"


This gem was uttered by, rather, written by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. I'm a lover of political speech and engage in it often, many times with zesty and unpredictable results. I would normally stand in the aisles and applaud the supreme court decision to roll back a law that restricted the right of the people to speak freely about their elected officials... But what bothers me, is that the quote above is not in reference to people, well, at least not technically.


Our word "Corporation" comes from the past tense of the Late Latin verb "Incorporare" which is "Incorporatus". These words  derive from "In" and "Corpus", which is where we get our word incorporate in all it's senses. Incorporating sugar into butter when we make cookies, incorporating slang into language, and incorporating (sometimes) hundreds of thousands of people into a body. Either way the result and process is the same, in "incorporation" the parts come together into a whole. Embodiment. To give material form. A Golem. 


I guess one could make the tenuous connection between a corporation and a person... If they had a reason or were prone to taking things *WAY* too literally. It seems The Supremes have taken things way too literally in their 5-4 decision yesterday in the case of "Citizens United v. FEC". This ruling rolls back restrictions stopping corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money in federal campaigns. There were a whole line of others who take things way too literally, and applauded the decision as a protection of "first amendment rights", as if a giant worldwide conglomerate has any constitutional rights... As if "We The People" would have included the likes of Wal-Mart... Just because they have a smiley face in the logo, doesn't mean they possess a soul, or spirit, or heartbeat or whatever it is you used to classify something as human or alive!


Ultimately this decision will make it easier for the largest companies in the world to buy up more airspace than anyone else. To run attack ads because Candidate (a) campaigned against the company's practices, or any of a number of reasons. If you think corporations already run this country (as I tend to) just wait until they aren't restricted in their spending... This spits in the common sense reason corporations were initially formed. They made *sense* at a time, but have over the centuries become something altogether different. A "person" can do very little... a "person" cannot afford TV air time... a "person" is limited by their sphere of influence... A corporation is *not* a person. And I am terrified that the judiciary, which I often consider the most tempered of the branches, could have considered, much less ruled in this way, on this constitutional travesty.


Of course, there were dissenters... 4 of them to be exact, and bravo to them... In his officially written and caustic dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it best... 


"The financial resources, legal structure,and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races."


Rest in peace America