First Amendment, Marriage, Corporations, Supreme Court

I had an email exchange with a liberal friend who insisted that the Supreme Court decision regarding corporate donations to political campaigns was "activist" because the Founders meant the First Amendment to apply only to individuals, not corporations.  Her reasoning was that corporations aren't individual people because they are subject to different accounting and tax law.  She was concerned that a candidate would be bought and paid for by some evil corporation with nefarious interests.

Twaddle.

By her logic, my husband and I could't write a check to a candidate because we're subject to different accounting and tax law than individuals.

Uh-huh.

I don't see anything in the letter or the spirit of the First Amendment to suggest that the rights within it are abridged because my tax form looks different from the guy standing next to me.  If the Fed says that my citizenship means I have to pay taxes to them, than the Fed ALSO says I enjoy all the rights and privileges of that citizenship.

Can't have it both ways.

I and my business partners and my employees who are all American citizens have legal standing to speak if we feel our health or very survival as a group is being somehow threatened by the government that taxes us, together, as a corporation.  We're not houseplants or space aliens that collectively form the corporation.  We are individual American citizens operating under federal law to self-sustain, asking nothing from our federal government, and in fact pay (federal taxes) for that very privelege to live and work in this great nation. We are, as a group, contributors to our federal government, not parasites on our federal government.

Now, that's not to say that the federal government can't regulate it to make sure it's "fair" but they can't FORBID our group speech.  For example, the requirement that all political advertising have "I'm John Smith and I approve this message" and that the entity that bankrolled the ad be clearly disclosed on all campaign advertising is an excellent idea.  Excellent because sunlight is, as they say, the best disinfectant.  If Pepsi pays for all of John Smith's advertising and John Smith is running on a plank that purports to outlaw Coke and every ad has "I'm John Smith and I approve this ad" with "Paid for by Pepsi" written right across the bottom of it, well, I trust the American people to have rudimentary reading skills and a basic sense of fairness, don't you?

Anything less is censorship.  You can't let one "group" of people give money and not another group.  You can't let PETA give money just because they are "non-profit"  They may be non-profit but SOMEBODY's getting paid... And as long as that somebody, or collection of somebodies is American, they can exercise their First Amendment rights, in the name of the entity that provides them with the pay that sustains them and, by the way, is subject to Federal withholding.  Again, you can't have it both ways.  You are either a citizen with all the rights and responsibilities attendant to that status or you're not.

You see, you can't say one group is allowed and not another, because then you have a situation ripe for corruption.  Whoever is in power could suddenly decide that this group or that group is unlikable for some reason and have their rights abridged.  You can't say one group is allowed because they file their taxes one way and another isn't because they file their taxes another way.  Again, ripe for corruption.

Liberals like to argue that the Founders couldn't have foreseen the technology that would come along, so therefore, the Constitution is somehow the antiquated notion, however noble, of a bunch of dead white guys.  Again, twaddle. 


The document is so brilliant, and so beautifully short, because they meant for us to honor the underlying sense of freedom and fair play it lays out.  As long as there is full disclosure of who is paying for what, I, unlike my liberal brethren, believe in the magnificent sense of fair play Americans have always shown, whether they've gotten their political advertising by candlelight and parchment, or by cable modem and plasma.