Of Persons, Corporations, Money and Speech

These are the times that try men's souls. On the one hand we have the Supreme Court of the United States empowering corporations at a time when they already come far too close to owning our representatives, our government and our country. On the other, we have a populace that doesn't understand how our most fundamental principles tie to either this question or the trying of accused terrorists.

Someone MUST speak out about the nature of our Rights and our Constitution.

We seem to have forgotten the truths that our founding fathers took to be self-evident, the principles to which our nation was dedicated. Many on the left are decrying the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, while at the same time civil libertarians often thought to be on the left have spoken in defense of the decision. As it turns out the questions here are not simple, and to work them out requires really knowing both how the system works and what the underlying principles are. It's not easy stuff, and we seem unprepared for it.

Let me start by agreeing with those who fear undue influence and power is given to the corporations, domestic, foreign and multinational by this decision. This decision does, in fact, remove important safeguards against the super-rich corporations overwhelming our electoral process with huge amounts of money. Not only that, but it opens our government to the influence of foreign money and foreign-owned corporations. It's easy to sneer at that last accusation (one Supreme Court Justice did just that), claiming that the decision only applies to US corporations, but that ignores the fact that being incorporated in one of the United States is very different from being owned exclusively or mostly by US citizens. Citgo, for instance is incorporated in the US, but it is owned by Petróleos de Venezuela. It is a "US corporation", ye, but it is also an entirely "foreign owned corporation". If Citgo has a right of free speech that allows it to finance political campaigns in the US, then Hugo Chavez who runs the government of Venezuela, who owns PDV, who owns Citgo, has that right. Many people think that this is not a good thing.

But let me also say that people like Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley also have a very real and valid point that the decision in Citizens United, which empowers Citgo, and PDV and Venezuela and Chavez is based on long standing principles of Constitutional law, law that has both important practical justifications and a basis in our most sacred principles. Greenwald has written on the topic at "What the Supreme Court got right" and "Follow-up on the Citizens United case". I recommend reading both, though I do not agree with everything that he wrote. Turley wrote a lengthy commentary in his blog and spoke about the topic on a segment of Countdown.

Greenwald makes the point that none of the nine Justices agree with those of us who argue that it is a problem that the law holds that corporations are people and that money is speech. On the latter he lays out a rather specific challenge. He says that if we are to claim that speech isn't money then we have to explain what will protect us from laws like the following (he gives several hypothetical examples, I'm using one for brevity):

"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent;"

My own response is that this is absolutist rhetorical flummery, that if money is speech, you get into problems just as deep:

If money is speech, then the First Amendment must give me the right to pay my Congressman to take an action I wish him to, because I have the right to tell him what I want him to do.

Clearly I have a right to tell my representative what I want him to do. If I cannot, I have lost not only the right of free speech, but also the right to representation, which is definitionally inherent in a Republic. But that doesn't give me the right to put my money where my mouth is and pay him to vote my way. That's bribery and corruption.

In the end, I do not believe that either absolute extreme, that money is speech or that money has nothing to do with freedom of speech is tenable, but, and it is a big "but", but Constitutionally protected rights, natural rights tend to be absolutist. That is one of their strengths. "Congress shall make no law..." like "Thou shall commit no murder" (I hope you'll forgive my slightly non-traditional, but I believe accurate translation of the Commandment) is strong because it is a prohibition. once you get into qualifying them you start allowing loop holes and we all know where that gets you.

I think we need to recognize that Constitutionally protected rights are not an artifact of law, are not granted by the government, judges or the Founders, but are rather natural rights, with which we are endowed by our Creator, whatever you consider said Creator to be. Corporations, are NOT natural, though. They ARE social constructs, the product of law, goverment and the consensus of society. When we constitute them, when we incorporate them as entities within our legal system, I think we have to say that they have rights, but that those rights are not inherent, that they derive from the rights of the people they comprise, and who create the corporations. We endow the corporations with rights and we can limit them.

Similarly, money is a social construct and while there are certainly moral aspects to money and to its use, it is not, in and of itself, speech. It can be used to enable or discourage speech and can be used to violate the rights of others, or with deference to their rights or to empower people, ourselves or others with regard to their rights. "Money is speech, speech is protected, money is thus protected" is a nice syllogism. It is simple and understandable, it is easy to derive conclusions from it. But it is oversimplified.

Einstein was right. "Make everything as simple as possible. And no Simpler."

Where does that analysis get us? Certainly NOT to a Constitutional amendment. But, given that corporations are created by legislation, Why can't legislation explicitly limit and define the rights and obligations they have? And since corporations are primarily commercial in nature, why can't regulating them be a federal function? The state laws define and control corporations and the methods of incorporation, but in the name of regulating interstate commerce, cannot the federal government set certain limits on corporations and the laws that control them?

This ties in to a number of issues before us today:

1. The empowering of corporations on the grounds of free speech.
2. Regarding money as speech and thus giving the extremely rich a greater practical right to "speak".
3. The influence of foreign money through the free speech of US incorporated, foreign owned corporations.
4. The right of all US citizens and anyone in the US to habeas corpus and trial by jury.
5. "Getting FISA right" and the potential abuse of the USA PATRIOT Act.
6. A system which allows the government to try accused terrorists in whichever court they know they can convict them in.

For all of these, it is important to understand the nature of rights in US Constitutional principles. We need to ground these discussions not only in what makes us safe from terrorists or corporations or corruption, but in terms of the natural rights that all men are endowed with and which we the people do not allow our government to violate. Our fundamental, natural rights are not granted by the government, the King, or the Constitution, and understanding that, and the principles our whole system is based on is both important and sadly lacking in the discussion of a lot of these and other critical issues.

Re: Jim, I need your voice on health care--Sorry, sir

Mr. President,

It is with great sadness and regret that I must decline your emailed request. I do this with intimate and personal knowledge of how important this legislation is. I am a computer consultant by profession, and with the downturn in the economy, my income has been slashed to a small fraction of what it once was. In fact, our family has had to rely heavily on my wife's part-time income while I attempt to build a whole new business. Last week, that reliance ended. In a fall down the cellar stairs, my wife broke one ankle and the other foot. Because I have been self-employed for the last 2.5 years and my wife is only a part-time employee with no benefits, our only health insurance is what we can afford to pay for out of pocket. The bills arising out of her injury and her inability to work combine put us in a precarious position.I find myself having to rely on the charity of others, on the Council for Aging in our small town, on volunteer organizations such as Household Goods Recycling of Massachusetts, and the support of family members.

Believe me, sir, I know how important health care reform is. I understand intimately how critical the Recovery and Stimulus plan are. I could not believe more in the important work that lies before you economically and with regard to health care. I understand that health care was, quite understandably your primary object during much of the campaign and that the economy has become both a problem of its own and an obstacle to the extremely hard work of making progress on health care.

Sadly, sir, while I believe all that, and my own livelihood and home are threatened by the dual threat of healthcare costs and the collapsed economy, none of that is my primary concern. No, sir. My concern is for the health of our Republic and not of the body or the economy. I love my wife, and I love my family, and I love my home. But we are strong and we will survive, somehow. My deepest concern is for the heart and soul of this country, for the Rule of Law, for the principles upon which this great nation was conceived, and to which it is dedicated. And that, sir, I believe is endangered. It is endangered by torture; by indefinite detention; by warrant-less surveillance, search and seizure; by kangaroo courts that fail to uphold either our civilian laws or the uniform code of military justice; by the notion that the highest ranking officials can break our laws and not be investigated, let alone prosecuted; by a government that clouds its crimes in claims of secrecy and unspecified nationally security. Today, sir, it is endangered by you.

After eight years of a Presidency that plumbed depths of deceit, greed, corruption, war crimes and the arrogation of raw power, I voted for you in hopes that we could turn the page, that we could heal this land, that we could restore the rule of law. Sadly, sir, it seems that we cannot; that your view of the presidency, of executive privilege, of state secrecy, of the immunity of the powerful from the rule of law is too tainted by the power illegitimately accrued by your predecessor. It seems, sir, that the old adage is true. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So, no, sir, you may not have my voice on health care, nor on the economy. You may not have it even though the woman I love is in bad need of better health care, even though this economy is depriving me of the ability to support my family. At this time, even in the face of those great crises, I have only enough voice for this: "Return us to the Rule of Law, not men." Close Gitmo. Stop the Military Commissions. Try the prisoners or free them. Forswear prolong and preventative detention. Investigate the War Crimes and prosecute the guilty. Stop hiding behind Executive Privilege and National Security. Save my country. Save it for my children and their children. Save it for your children. This is not a distraction. Without our Soul this country dies.

I will find some way, through the charity of strangers, the support of my family or the Hand of Providence to get my wife the care she needs. I will find a way to join with others to build a company to employ us all and save our homes and livelihoods. It will be hard, but since they brought my multi-great grandfather to these shores in chains for the crime of being a Scot and supporting the wrong absolute ruler, my family has found a way to do those things. Somehow, I and mine will find the way to protect and fend for ourselves. What you, sir, must do, is defend this country, and despite all that has been said in this new century, the threat to this country is not foreign fanatics. It is domestic fanatics. It is power misused, law abandoned. It is forgetting what makes this nation great. It is abandoning our principles.

I am not of your party. I am an independent. Yet, I voted for you, and worked for you and wept with joy to see a man with your background, both in heritage and in principle, elected President. The promise of it! The hope. Live up to that hope, sir. Give us back our Country. That, above all, is what we need. Then, sir, I will join you in working for health care and the economy and the other great works there are before us.

Jim Burrows, aka Brons - Vox Libertas

Thank you, Senator Dodd

Senator Dodd,

Thank you, Senator. Thank you for doing what so few have these last few years: standing up for the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law doesn't have a big office on K Street, nor does it result in much juicy gossip. And though, for a while, it seemed to have become a partisan issue, with the Republicans working against it out of loyalty to an Imperial President and Democrats speaking up for it to show their opposition to him, we see now that it has few partisans, that few will man the barricades for it.

And yet there you stand, not in Iowa or New Hampshire, but on the floor of the Senate, speaking for the Rule of Law, the principle that if you violate the law, commit crimes, you must face justice in a court of law. There you stand, for the principle that the law of the land and not the whims and dictates of the Commander in Chief, the Sole Supervisor of the Unitary Executive, the man with "Inherent Executive Authority" that goes back to the Divine Right of Kings, is what rules us. There you stand.

And with you stand the ghosts of all our forefathers who gave their lives for the precious documents that enshrine that principle. How has it come to this that so few of our supposed leaders, our representatives, our senior statesmen stand by you? How is it that Senator Reid can give lip service to the principle, but bring to the floor the version of the bill that casts it aside, yet again? How can he not honor your "hold" and yet honor Senator Graham's that protects the power to torture from the application of the Army's Field Manual?

We hear much about supporting our troops. How does it support them to throw aside the practices of the Field Manual which prescribes principles of international law that we expect the world to apply to them. How does it support our troops to set aside the Uniform Code of Military Justice in favor of secretive ad hoc "Tribunals"? How does it serve them to tear down the principles that we insisted on at Nuremberg, that the rule of law and not of vengeance and power of the victor to do what he likes with the vanquished? How does it honor our dead to set aside the Constitution, Federal statutes and those of the several States, the laws and principles they fought and died for?

How have we come to the point where the ability to torture gets more respect from the leader of the Senate, the supposed head of the Opposition, than does the defense of the principle that those who break the law must face Justice in a Court of Law? It seems surreal. Routinely these days you hear people invoke Orwell's 1984, and less often Brave New World. Occasionally, Animal Farm is suggested as shedding light on where we are, or wry comments are made about the subtitle, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb".

But this week I feel like I'm caught in the President's Analyst. You may remember the film that satirized spy thrillers and conspiracy theories, by making the ultimate evil force that threatened our country that villain that everyone could hate: TPC -- The Phone Company. I feel like Dr. Sydney Schaefer, the titular President's Analyst who becomes convinced that everyone is spying on him, that all the spy agencies, and at their heart The Phone Company are out to get him. Back in 1967 we laughed at the film. It was an absurdist spoof. Today we seem on the verge of making it real, of making The Phone Company immune to prosecution, immune to civil suit, immune to inquiry as they secretively spy on us at the whim of a President whose lawyers tell him he is above the law or perhaps he IS the Law..

But, there you are. There you stand. Son of an FBI agent, Senator and Nuremberg prosecutor. Dark horse in a Presidential race where one freshman senator criticizes another for lack of experience. And while they thump their tubs, you stand and speak and act for the Rule of Law. Thank you Senator. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. As the descendant of a Scot who came to this country in chains, condemned to indentured servitude for standing against a self proclaimed "Lord Protector", only to win his freedom and settle in your home state, I thank you.

Thank you for remembering how hard fought our freedoms and privileges are in this country, thank you for standing for the the Rule of Law. It's not glamorous. It will not win you friends. It probably does you little good on the campaign trail. It will not endear you to K Street or to the leaders of your party. But thank you, and may Providence bless you.

Jim Burrows
Vox Libertas
A free voice