When I was a young lad, an elderly gentleman came to our house for dinner. He was a wonderful old character, full of stories, and endlessly knowledgeable.
This gentleman claimed to have had an older relative who was present at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. As our guest was himself in his eighties at the time, and had been born just before the start of the twentieth Century, this certainly seemed plausible.
His relative had insisted that Lincoln's address was always being misquoted - or more precisely, misspoken. He insisted that when Lincoln spoke the final words of his address, he placed his emphasis on the word "people,' rather than on the word "of." So, his final words would have sounded like this:
.
..and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.
After the Supreme Court decision today declaring that government may not ban corporate spending in candidate elections, I think we may be seeing the end of government of, by and for the people, and the constitutional enshrinement of government of the moneyed, by the moneyed and for the moneyed.
As if things weren't bad enough. The whole notion of representative democracy was already coming apart at the seams because of the obscene amount of money currently corrupting the electoral and legislative processes - not to mention the gerrymandering of districts that goes on once the folks on the receiving end of the money get into office.
"It's going to be the Wild Wild West," said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who has represented several GOP presidential campaigns. "If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts ... it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions."
Just who do you suppose the big corporations will be fighting for?
Hmmmm....let's see, that's a tough one.
After a corporation has spent millions of dollars supporting a candidate's campaign, whose interests do you suppose that candidate will have uppermost in his mind as he casts important votes on legislation?
Hmmm...another real brain teaser.
Who's going to have more clout, do you suppose, unions or corporations? Who has more clout now? Does anyone really believe that unions have a prayer of keeping up with the spending capacity of, say, Goldman Sachs, or other gigantic banks and corporations?
PAC's, giant corporations, small corporations, other businesses, unions, used car dealerships, in fact any group of people who have the money and desire to do so, are free to create political ads that lie, spread disinformation and, in many cases, slander, in order to elect candidates who also lie, spread disinformation and, in many cases, slander, and who are guaranteed to support their narrow interests.
Well, one thing we can remain confident of: this new political environment will attract a whole new breed of decent, honest, principled, trustworthy, incorruptible men and women to public service. Men and women ready to stand firmly on the side of ordinary people.
It sure is a good thing we have people like Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court to protect us.
When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought," the court said in a decision written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. "This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.
I had previously believed that the First Amendment was about speech, but now we learn according to Justice Kennedy, that it's actually about thought.
Now, in addition to the millions of dollars on ads spent by PAC's, millions of dollars spent on lobbying, an entire "news" outlet that exists solely as a propaganda machine for one political party, citizens will now enjoy the "freedom" to view political ads created using millions of dollars of corporate money, so we can express our First Amendment right to think for ourselves.
I like that! I feel empowered! I'm going to go right out and enjoy my newly-confirmed freedom and start thinking for myself all over the goddam place!
Actually... now that I think about it, I don't know. We citizens are already bombarded too much with disinformation, distortions propaganda and outright lies to think for ourselves. In fact, there is so much confusion out there that I think it might be better if I just don't think at all.
Thanks, Justice Kennedy, but I've decided I don't want to think for myself, after all. In fact, I think I'm going to stop thinking for myself and turn myself into the appropriate authorities for violating my own First Amendment rights.
That'll show 'em!
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