SCOTUS Restores Free Speech
Ξ January 27th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Politics |
I meant to write about this last week, but the Supreme Court corrected itself when it ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to eviscerate the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, as it should have done earlier in the decade when the law was first passed.
What surprised me was the reaction of the left to the ruling. I’ve rarely seen such widespread knee-jerk anger over something before. I pop over the The Progressive and am greeted with a call to amend the Constitution. DailyKos is ranting about it too. Something about corporations not being people or some such. Which, of course, entirely misses the point. It’s as if when you say the word “corporation”, all they see is Pepsi, GE and Halliburton, and miss fact that the NRA, the ACLU, the New York Times and both Republican and Democratic parties are all incorporated.
Corporations act like individuals for legal purposes, which has it’s pluses and minuses, but in this case is generally irrelevant. The point of the matter is that corporations are collections of individuals organized towards a common goal. In that sense, the ability of these organizations to express their opinions on the issues and politicians in an election seems to me to be pretty fundamental to a healthy civic society. That’s why the ACLU filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs seeking to overturn the ban on corporate spending.
The National Review has a pretty good defense of the ruling.
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