The Curmudgeon Chronicle - #269

THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©

AN IRREVERENT VIEW


Time Line: January 23, 2010
Date Line: Chicago IL

The Founders placed responsibility for safeguarding our constitution in the hands of judges. That was done at a time when judges were generally responsible to conscience, God, and the country’s well being. A look at the make-up of the first Supreme Court demonstrates that diversity need not militate against the country’s best interests or favor a course of action which would weaken the body politic or the value of a citizen’s vote.

Other times and other mores have produced terrible decisions in the past but none as dangerous as the Court’s politically motivated decision last week.

Dred Scott stated our law until the make-up of the court changed to overturn it. The existence of Dred Scott as the law of the land extended bigotry and created racial hatreds that we still deal with today.
The Supreme Court’s action in the matter of “free speech by a corporate entity” is of the same ilk. They have left the country with a mare’s nest of burdensome problems that and may lead to its cessation as a haven of freedom and to its ultimate downfall.

A corporation is not a “person”: it is a legal fiction designed to protect its owners from personal liability for the business and affairs it conducts. A corporation has no conscience, purpose, or voice other than that given to it by its directors. In our society large corporate entities are governed by people who do not own a majority of its shares and who use the proceeds of its daily activities for purposes and in ways that are not usually known to its shareholders.

The corporate form is the least democratic of business combinations; it is the device of oligarchy and despotism.

The Supreme Court’s majority sits in the seat of power and is repaying its debt to the corporate entities that put them on the bench. While paying what you owe is commendable, it is not appropriate in this instance. In the current circumstances Dred Scott would still be the law of the land.

Others have analyzed the effect of the decision on elections and State constitutions: that is not my purpose. The practical effects of the decision are what concern me.

The most egregious is the self-perpetuation of the current Supreme Court majority. The likelihood of a change in the court’s make-up is remote if elections are bought in 2010 and 2012. That this was the purpose of the decision is clear. The case that came before the Court did not request the relief that was granted. It was a matter that could have been treated as sui generis. Indeed that would be the normal course taken by the court.

Now there are good and right thinking Republicans and Democrats who will never stand a chance of election in the circumstances they now face. Indeed all candidacies are now for sale and special interests with the funds to buy legislators will govern us. The country we know will cease to exist; there will be no effective dissent and no effective bar to perpetuation of control by cash.

This is the time to weigh judicial tyranny on a jeweler’s scale. If 1/50th ounce of control by a vested interest is enough to destroy the constitutional guaranty of citizenship then we must find checks and balances to offset such absolutism.

Regardless of 115 pages of legal drivel, a corporation is not a person; is not a citizen, and has as much right to control our form of government as does China.

Howard Stamer