Dumb “Libertarians” of America, Wake up!

There is nothing libertarian or freedom-serving about the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling.

To see this let us all reflect on what corporations are.

Corporations are not persons and they’re also not just gatherings of persons. Rather, they are formally and governmentally sanctioned organizations of persons.

In many ways, corporations are much more like governments than they are like persons or just informal gatherings of persons. That is, they have a certain formal governmental top-down organization. And at the top of both governments and corporations there is always a single individual who is constituted as the chief executive. This decider (if I could use the term) decides what the government or corporation will do. However, this decider, whether or not he is the decider, is just a person and as such already has all of the rights that naturally inhere in humans as humans (or so the natural rights philosophy embodied in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution says).

Now, formal top-down organizations, like governments and corporations, are, in one way or another, ultimately the expression of the decisions of this decider, and if corporations and governments are then given all of the same rights as persons (for instance, the right to make an establishment of whatever religious beliefs they want or the right to vote in an election), then all that has been affected is that the decider of them has twice as many rights as anyone who is not in the lucky position of a decider.

Keeping with my analogy between governments and corporations, consider that if the government could be said to have all of the rights of a person, then the First Amendment  (the supposed basis of the Citizens United v. FEC decision) would appear to be very weird. “Government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or preventing the free exercise thereof…”?—Oh, but then this would prevent the decider, in the capacity of the decider, from using whatever is at his disposal in whatever way he wants to proclaim his religion and his views on anything else.—Yes! That is what the Constitution, in theory, is meant to do to the leaders of the institutions that govern our lives—prevent them from setting up a state religion, for instance.  Notice also that this restriction on government’s rights applies not just to the federal government, but to all governments, state and local and so on.

But, of course, the decider, before he ever becomes the decider, already has all of the natural rights of a human being. There is nothing unfair to him if we do not allow him to have more rights than anyone else who happens not to have a corporation or government at his disposal.

Unfortunately, from our legal makeup after this decision it can easily be demonstrated that anyone with a controlling interest in an authoritarian institution that has been given all of the rights of a natural human being has at least 1+x more rights than anyone who does not have a controlling interest in an authoritarian institution, where x is the proportion of one’s control over the given institution.

It is a farce, or worse, a lie, to say that this decision represents freedom and liberty for all. It’s sole meaning is: more freedom and liberty for some, less for others.