If you thought liberals were in favor of free speech, think again. Today, the United States Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which it struck down a major censorship provision of the McCain-Feingold “campaign-finance reform” act of 2002. In response, Ralph Nader’s group Public Citizen issued a call for a constitutional amendment to partially repeal the First Amendment:
In their statement responding to the decision, Public Citizen demanded public financing of congressional elections, then added its call for an amendment, saying:
Public Citizen will aggressively work in support of a constitutional amendment specifying that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment protections, except for freedom of the press. We do not lightly call for a constitutional amendment. But today’s decision so imperils our democratic well-being, and so severely distorts the rightful purpose of the First Amendment, that a constitutional corrective is demanded.
We are formulating language for possible amendments, asking members of the public to sign a petition to affirm their support for the idea of constitutional change, and planning to convene leading thinkers in the areas of constitutional law and corporate accountability to begin a series of in-depth conversations about winning a constitutional amendment.
[. . .]
At least they are finally admitting that they view the First Amendment—which says Congress shall make no law respecting freedom of speech—as flawed. And that they judge themselves as smarter than James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights that begins with the First Amendment (actually it was the third, but that’s another story), and the “Father of the Constitution.”
Sorry Rob, the first amendment doesn't apply to corporations which only have their "personhood" on extremely shaky legal grounds in the first place. It is a demonstration of liberal 'true colors' – we don't want corporations to have more ownership of the political process than they already have – for the sake of the first amendment rights of actual human beings.
Just as a curiosity, would you also support utterly excluding unions from the political process?
No, I wouldn't, because unions are designed, overtly, as representative of people's political interests, whereas corporations are designed, overtly, to maximize profits for their beneficiaries and externalize every possible cost.
That is, a union is just a group of people who argue collectively so they have more leverage – excluding them seems nonsensical to me.
A corporation (which is not even slightly a person in any sense – or if it is, it is a sociopathic person by defintion) does not even claim to represent political interests of individuals. It is a self-interested body designed to maximize profit and concentrate resources – exactly the kind of thing which our political process should exclude at every turn (American politics is (should be) a non-profit business for a lot of good reasons).
Aric Clark, above, was in fact me, using his computer while visiting and accidentally signed in as Aric.
I'd say that for-profit government is perhaps the worst idea ever, guaranteed to lead to unprecedented inequity and abuse, and feel there are cascades of evidence to back this up. Unless we want to return to feudalism or worse, we must keep profit out of politics as much as humanly possible.
You know, I agree with your last paragraph. I simply disagree on means.