I have to admit, I find it shocking that people are defending the majority's decision in the Supreme Court's overturning yesterday of campaign-financing reform laws. Nevertheless, reading some of the comments published online in response to various news reports about the decision, it seems the American public is just as divided as was the Court. And that leaves me once again frightened for the future of not just America, the country, but America, the idea.
I take a backseat to no one in my devotion to the First Amendment. Anyone who knows me at all knows I am a thoroughgoing champion of free speech and the free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to petition the government. But anyone who knows me also knows that these freedoms do not include the right, for example, to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire--for the danger to the public safety of inciting panic outweighs the individual's right to say what he likes willy-nilly. For the same reason, the Founding Fathers always knew and recognized [read the Federalist Papers if you don't believe me--Ed.] that what they were protecting was political speech. Commercial speech, the right to hawk one's goods, as it were, was never intended to get the same level of protection. Otherwise, we'd have no truth in advertising laws, and people who were damaged by lies such as "oh, this product is 100% safe" when the product was, in fact, toxic, would have no legal recourse. Then again, in the days before the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, many people didn't care. What you don't know can't hurt you . . . except that it can, and frequently does.
But how anyone can equate a corporation with a living, breathing human being is utterly beyond me. We are the United States of America, not the United Corporations of America. Our system is "of the people, by the people, and for the people" not "of, by, and for the Corporation."
Corporations do not have the right to cast ballots in either primary or general elections. Corporations exist to make profits for their owners. They have no other raison d'etre. They do not care about right and wrong, good and bad, or any of the other higher concerns that motivate individual people. Corporations are at best amoral, artificial creatures, which do not exist outside the laws governing their creation and operation. Their behavior thus can be regulated according to the public will. Their only stake in our system of government is to do whatever they can within the law to minimize risk and maximize profit.
But they do have an inordinate amount of money to throw around, and that raw economic power alone puts them in opposition to being regulated by government. After all, when they can make an extra $10 per toy, for example, if they don't have to ensure that said toy is lead-free, they will not spend the money to make the toy lead-free . . . unless an outside regulatory force, government, makes them do so.
Government exists to do the things we as individuals cannot do for ourselves. In its own way, it's "the cost-effective" option. Better for us, as individuals, to have one government agency out there to test and regulate toys for lead content than to force every family in the country to buy lead-testing kits along with every single new toy. We ARE the government. Government is not our enemy. It is our agent, our collective representative. Its raison d'etre is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Corporations are not alive; they are not free (they don't exist except within the context of the laws); and happiness is NOT their pursuit. Their pursuit is to make money. The most money for the least possible cost. Period.
These are facts. They cannot be disputed. I concede that the implications of these facts are disputed, but too often the dispute is not about the merits of whatever is at issue. The dispute too often becomes a cover for expression of one's personal political proclivities at the expense of genuine discussion and debate. For example, the vast majority of the people posting comments supporting the Court's majority ruling takes a very bullying, schoolyard tone. Most of those people's comments do not rise above the level of name-calling and insulting those with whom they disagree. That alone suggests that those people are in the wrong, for if the facts are on your side, you should be stressing the facts, not making personal attacks on anyone else.
To all you who wrote in favor of the majority's ruling: you who say that this is a great victory for the First Amendment and truly free speech, and who believe that the Internet will protect the full expression and circulation of all ideas, are forgetting something: if the corporate owners of your access to the Internet decide to pull the plug, what will you do then?
Money in politics is like steroids in sports--especially baseball--it distorts everything in favor of those who have the most clout. Again, corporations are not people; corporations do not vote. What if all the shareholders but one in a corporation dislike the position the corporation has chosen to support financially, but the one shareholder has the controlling vote? The controlling shareholder thus essentially gets double expression of his idea since he can express it through his individual vote AND through the corporation's spending. All the other shareholders can cast their individual votes otherwise, but if the one shareholder, through his corporation's money's clout, has the ear of the people in office, they're going to listen to him, not the other shareholders. For they know that if they don't listen to him, he'll put his money and resources at the disposal of their political opponents. "Pay to play" and "get paid to play" will become the norm, not standing up for the larger public good.
If you disagree with this analysis, fine, but answer me this: if my analysis is so wrong, so off-the-beam, why do corporations spend millions and millions of dollars every day on lobbyists and advertising? Because lobbying and advertising work. Jane and John Q. Public's voices can hardly be heard above the din of all the money that's in the system now. Removing the few regulations that were in place until yesterday's ruling means the silencing of Jane and John for good. Maybe not in one fell swoop, but ultimately . . . what do they say in Las Vegas? "Money plays."
Money plays. Money wins. No longer will the best ideas win because of their intrinsic merits. The best ideas will never even get heard. The ideas that win will be the ideas that have the most money behind them. Furthermore, it is error to presume that getting tons of financial support is a sign of being the best idea. It is a sign only of the idea which is in the best interests of those with the most money to spend, which may be antithetical to the best interests of you and of me, we who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the system.
I was afraid this would happen back when the Court announced it would hear the case. I even wrote about it in this blog. See "Overshadowed In Yesterday's News," posted 9/10/09. I will say at this point that I am sick to death of the way EVERYTHING has become politicized in this country. Some things ought to be bigger than politics, and the fact that nothing any longer is saddens me. Maybe "America" cannot work, for the very freedoms it protects enable the seeds of its own destruction to sprout and grow. For my part, 99% of the hope I felt at this time last year has gone right down the drain.
To conclude with a bit of hyperbole: this Supreme Court ruling truly is the worst thing to happen to people as individuals since the Dred Scott case, for in effect, it makes you and me and every other person who is not a CEO or CFO de facto chattel of those who are. Not all at once, mind you. Just after our access to all ideas has been so squeezed and so circumscribed by those with the money, hence the power, to press incessantly for their points of view that we will be anesthetized or otherwise beaten into submission.
Still, in every "good" there is a "bad," and vice versa. At least the lie that "conservative" justices hew to "original intent" has been put to death once and for all. This ruling is activist in the extreme. Radical, I daresay. Not that that matters to the right-wingers who insist on politicizing everything. As far as they are concerned, it's only "activism" when they disagree with the outcome. Anyone with intellectual honesty and integrity, however, must admit that "activism" is "activism." It's only bad when it takes us (collectively, as a society) backwards and not forwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment