Another Straw in the wind about the Supreme Court decision - but give it a chance

[ThomWV]

There have been a lot of suggestions about ways to get around the SC decision and soon after they're voiced they get knocked down for this reason or that. Still, away must be found. The real question is not if money is speech, that's a red herring when it comes to nullifying this terrible decision. No the key likes in denying Corporate personhood.

It must be made clear in law that a person, for the purpose of application of Constitutional rights, is a living creature with blood coursing in its veins and electrical activity in its brain. Its heart must beat! Get that definition enshrined in law and the problem is solved.

I know this is a terrible thing to say to a room full of Democrats, and to hear it from a lifelong Democrat makes it even worse I suppose, but if the definition is carefully crafted you could get the Religious Right on board in a heartbeat. It would be the death of abortion, but we would gain a mighty ally.

Immagine the full strength of the US religious community working hand in hand with the progressive community's constitution defenders demanding a clear definition of what is a person. It would be any unbeatable pair politically.

[dbonds]

1. What about the upcoming robotic slave class?

If they can think and feel, do they count?

[ThomWV]

2. That would be us, right?

[dbonds]

4. We might be slave class, but not robots - not even cybernetic - yet.

I was contrasting the heartbeat criteria, since we have all seen the movies how are upcoming robots start to feel and think and overthrow the humans because of the way we treat them.

BTW: I think the means of getting humans enslaved is by the corporations with debt. Avoid debt and avoid our corporate overlords.

[Donnachaidh]

3. so poor women can look forward to rusty hangers again?

"It would be the death of abortion, but we would gain a mighty ally."

Uhh, NO FUCKING WAY.PERIOD.

Women have been the tossaway tissue for far too fucking long. Find another way.

[ThomWV]

6. I agree

I said it was reprehensible. I also looked at reply number 5. Chief Justice Roberts is a young man.

[spanone]

5. given this court, i think abortion will be gone soon.

[adamuu]

7. I work with AI. I wonder if automatically generated text is protected. n/t

[glinda]

8. In now defining a person, are we going to to go there.... abortion??????

[glinda]

9. No. They need to totally knock this ruling down some how.

[Yurovsky]

10. A constitutional amendment is probably the only way...

the SC isn't likely to shift markedly in its ideological makeup anytime soon. The two justices most likely to retire or pass away -Stevens & Ginsberg - are two of the most consistently progressive voices on the court.

JMHO...

[glinda]

11. sad

[coti]

12. I disagree. The "corporations are not people" argument only goes so far

because the fact is that corportions do and should have some rights. They have a set of interests that have to be protected- i.e., they must have standing to sue if injured, etc. Corporations only have "personhood" to the extent that they have any rights that people have, and your proposal seems overbroad. Its result might be taking all rights away from corporations.

Contrary to your opinion, I believe this argument does come down to "giving money as speech." I think an incorrect, dangerous analogy has been made between giving money and speaking politically where a more proper comparison between giving money and voting can be made. We have already put limits on how much money private citizens can give directly to political candidates- in violation of the First Amendment, as the argument is going- and the same reasoning would support putting limits on all individuals, not just corporations, in the amount of money they can spend on all political advocacy.

At first glance such limitations do seem to go against the spirit of the First Amendment- they would restrict the free flow of ideas in our country. But, when one thinks about it a little deeper, limiting the influence of money in our discourse is actually much more true to the overall spirit of the Constitution, and the First Amendment in particular. When the founders wrote the Constitution, enshrining the principle of "one man, one vote" (setting aside those pesky women, non-land-owners and slaves, of course), and the First Amendment, I don't think what they properly should have had in mind was that people with a whole lot of money should have more say or a greater presence in our discourse than those without it.

In other words, the merit of ideas (and the hopefully increased representation of ideas with their greater merit), bears no correlation to the amount of money supporting them. A political idea's merit depends on prioritization of values and the strength of reasoning showing connection of the idea to those values. A system in which ideas get more or less representation depending on the financial situation of the person or entity advocating for it seems to me to actually go against the intention of the First Amendment and its roots in the Enlightenment. That is, unless money is a valued end in itself, rather than a means toward supporting those things we do truly value.