'Free speech' just got a lot costlier (Sagan | Amarillo Globe-News)

[struggle4progress]

... But a corporation cannot commit a crime. The people who work for a corporation can be guilty of criminal conduct, but not the corporation itself. Why? Because a corporation doesn't have a conscience. Not having a conscience, a corporation cannot make moral decisions. If a corporation cannot make a moral decision then it cannot make an immoral one. For that you need a "real" person.

This distinction between "legal" and "real" persons has been pretty clear over the past century or so, and in all it's probably served us well. But the court's decision in Citizens United has partially dissolved that distinction. Now the court is saying that a corporation is capable of deciding between two political parties, candidates or positions independently of the people who work in the organization. I submit to you that any decision involving political preference is, by definition, a moral decision. If you don't believe that, then you might want to read this page more regularly and thoroughly, especially around election time. The concepts of "good" and "evil" are so ubiquitous and compelling that it is absurd to deny it. Nowadays when Americans vote they aren't defeating a candidate or agenda, they are defeating the devil.

So if a corporation can accept the court's ruling about its freedom to "speak" by giving money to political causes then it must be capable of other acts involving moral distinctions. We are now substantially closer to the idea that a corporation can be guilty of a crime even as all of its employees are innocent. So if my Envoy indulges a whim and blows up, thereby killing somebody, GM could conceivably wind up in the dock to account for itself. If found guilty then I suppose we could detonate GM's headquarters as a kind of practical and symbolic "death penalty," but I suspect this would be cold comfort to anyone affected by the homicide.

If you think all of this is an absurdity then I invite you to consider how far down the path of the preposterous we've already come. A corporation needs free speech? What will it say? ...

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/012610/opi_opin2.shtml

[MindPilot]

1. And of course the other side, or maybe the deeper side

whatever penalties are assessed on the corporation are in reality assessed on the employees, vendors, suppliers and the customers. Because out of the abstract, the corporation is the people who depend on it.

The original purpose of a corporation was to limit exposure of a businessman's liability so his personal assets were not threatened by claims against his business. But the idea of that entity being a person is just silly.

[skepticscott]

2. Yes, it pretty much IS all an absurdity

The Citizen's United case was not about corporate "personhood", however much you dislike that concept, and it certainly was not about whether corporations "need" free speech (leaving aside the fact that trying to separate the speech of individuals from that of organized groups is a useless and meaningless exercise). The case was about what restrictions (if any) that Congress can place on political speech and the means for getting a political message out. The First Amendment says nothing about free speech rights being restricted to "persons" or anything else. It says that Congress can't restrict it, regardless of where the speech in coming from. It is truly mind-boggling how many people on this site don't grasp that simple concept.

And this: I submit to you that any decision involving political preference is, by definition, a moral decision. Absolutely idiotic fantasy. "By definition"? Did this brain-addled fool never hear of a decision involving political preference being made on economic grounds? :crazy: