Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
Of all the first principals that America was founded on, this one seems to be the one most in need of being remembered. It doesn't seem like something as obvious as this should need to be reaffirmed, but now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have rights, just like people, it does. As the 2012 political season enters it's third year, one of the leading candidates, Romney, has even said that "corporations are people too".
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
Comedian Stephen Colbert, a South Carolina native, wanted to put this question to the people on the South Carolina primary ballot. Using the same tool that corporations use to control elections, he formed his own "super PAC" and offered to pay half a million dollars for the cost of the primary election just to get this question in front of South Carolina voters. On this occasion, the South Carolina Supreme Court made it impossible.
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
What, exactly, does it mean when lawyers decided that corporations are people too? It means that they have "rights" just like people do. In particular, the Supreme Court has now decided that a corporation has a "free speech" right just like you and I do and that, therefore, nobody can tell a corporation how much money they can spend, or where they got the money, to get candidates for office elected.
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
Where did anyone get the idea that a corporation was actually a person? Believe it or not, the primary justification was inserted into the text of a Supreme Court decision by a law clerk by mistake in an obscure decision back in 1886. But since the decision was published that way, lawyers hired by corporations pounced on it and, like mice chewing away at the fabric of the Constitution, they have been enlarging this loophole ever since. In an even earlier 1819 case, the famous lawyer Daniel Webster successfully convinced the Supreme Court that a contract granted by King George could not be overruled by the legislature elected by the people of New Hampshire because the private corporation that held the contract had rights, just like you and I. Not someone who worked for the corporation ... the corporation itself.
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
One of the main reasons that a corporation is not a person is that a corporation is timeless, ageless, and boundless. A corporation lives forever and can outlast you. A corporation can operate simultaneously across the nation and around the world. It can command the loyalty of hundreds of thousands, and if those prove to be not loyal enough, the corporation can discard them and hire thousands more who are more loyal. No person and even no generation has been able to stand against corporate power. Thomas Jefferson warned against this kind of power in his letter, "The earth belongs to the living." Corporations are often the expression of the will of people long since dead, but the lawyers have ruled that their will - through corporations - can control us, the living, anyway.
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
The 1886 mistake, and the great leap into personhood by corporations, was given life by an amendment to the Constitution that was enacted in large measure to correct another Supreme Court mistake: the Civil War Dred Scott decision that decided that some people - slaves - were not actually people under the Constitution. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution put that right by declaring in clear, ringing words that:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
But the courts have now decided that a corporation is actually a person. A corporation - not someone who works for the corporation or someone who owns shares in the corporation - the corporation itself - can enforce a contract. In 2010, by a contested 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that a corporationhas free speech rights. Will corporations get the right to vote next? In place of the people who work there to cut out the middle process of buying elections?
Corporations are not people. Only people are people.
Since the laws created corporations as people, the only solution now is for the laws to destroy this idea again. It was a mistake, just like the Dred Scott decision was a mistake. We can correct it the same way, through a new constitutional amendment. One that rings out: "The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only."
The next time you get a chance to talk to anyone running for public office, ask this question:
Should corporations be considered to be people under the law?