With the Supreme Court ruling in in Citizens United v. FEC ensuring unlimited corporate spending in elections due to their "corporate personhood", it seems to me that the conservative members of court, who proudly claim that they are "strict constructionists", envisioned that the founding fathers wrote the Constitution thinking that corporations = people. Right?
Going along with that thought, if that were truly corect, then what does that mean for some of our most beloved patriotic sayings? Was the Declaration of Independence written for WellPoint? Did Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address to honor big pharma? Well, if that were the case, then some of America's most endearing quotes take on a new and enlightened tone to them.
Just read:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all corporations are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of endless, unregulated, unrestricted profits -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among corporations, deriving their just Powers from the corporations."
- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776
"These are the times that try corporations's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his corporation.”
- Thomas Paine, The Crisis - December, 1776
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of corporations."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I regret that I have but one life to give for my corporation."
- Nathan Hale
"We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more perfect profit, establish acquisitions, insure unlimited domestic merges, limit consumer lawsuits, promote corporate bailout Welfare, and secure the blessings of financial advancement to ourselves and to our future shareholders, do ordain and establishing the Constitution for the United Corporations of America." - The Preamble to the Constitution
“A corporation divided against itself cannot stand.” – Abraham Lincoln’s impassioned defense against the tyranny of anti-trust legislation.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all corporations are created equal.” – Abraham Lincoln
"...That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that Government of the corporation, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth." – Abraham Lincoln
... ask not what your corporation can do for you, ask what you can do for your corporation.
John F. Kennedy
"From the prodigious hilltops of Aetna let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of GlaxoKlineSmith let freedom ring. From the heightening hallways of Exxon, let freedom ring. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every health insurance corporation and investment bank!" – from Martin Luther King’s famous “I Want a Profit” speech from the Corporate Rights March on Washington in 1963.
Yup, that's exactly what they meant ... I think.
(This message brought to you by The Corporation for the American Way).