The Republic Takes Another Kick to the Nuts

The Supreme Court today issued a disastrous ruling that will allow corporations and unions to advertise without limit for and against candidates in upcoming elections. The mistake, to my mind, that the majority made was two-fold.

First, they are endowing large organizations that exist merely to squeeze money out of the populace with political rights. And, in fact, by being able to throw unlimited amounts of money into running ads, they have given these organizations a type of political right unimaginable to most citizens. Corporations and unions are not citizens. They have no civil rights whatsoever. They cannot vote and should not be able to influence the vote in any way. In fact, all PACs, to my mind, should be banned as well. Voting and everything associated with it is the province of citizens and citizens alone. Corporations, unions, political action committees, non-profits, lobbying organizations, associations, and anything else you can think of that is not a human citizen should be barred from participating. They have no rights. Rights are reserved for people, for citizens.

The second mistake is in confusing advertising with political speech. Advertising is no more political speech than a game of three-card monte is. It is commercial speech at its most brazen and oily. To debase political speech, to sully "a house divided against itself" or "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" or even my own ramblings here with the sludge of advertising is to debase and sully the entire democratic experiment we embarked upon more than 200 years ago.

Rome began as a republic and ended as an empire. We are sliding along that muddy road with the help and consent of the United States Supreme Court. The bastards.