Dear senator Chuck Schumer. This is an open response to the recent e-mail I received from you asking me to join the petition drive to amend the Constitution as a way to prevent the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision from harming our democracy. To make it clear, I am in full support of your efforts and will sign the petition for a possible Constitutional amendment, if necessary.
But first, I have a claim to make and I hope I’ll get my fellow Kossacks’ help to further clarify my observation. All opinion are welcome. Please follow me below the orange squiggly thing.
Claim: There is no need to amend the Constitution to fix the “Citizens United” because it is unconstitutional as it stands. We just need to make this point clear to our public. Why do I think the “Citizens United” is unconstitutional? For starters, our Constitution and system of laws are based on the individual citizen’s freedom of conscience thus we stand in front of justice as an individual, not a group of individuals united. Our ‘unity’ as a nation meanwhile is not based on a group unity but an infinitive unity of a nationhood. “One” nation, “one” people permits no sameness of a group, any group. We are allowed freedom to be unique and original/different as individuals. ‘Sameness’ implies totalitarian oppression. “Citizens United” then takes away that right of an individual’s unique conscience, creating an artificial conscience of a group of individuals whose consciences are supposed to be the same, instead. Human beings by nature however are never exact copies of one another unless they “live” in a cartoon universe. Our Constitution too is based on the laws of nature, and the laws of nature reject sameness of any kind. The unity of nature then is also not a unity of the same but of the infinitely different.
Therefore, found/based on the laws of nature, the unity of the United States of America is never the unity of sameness but the unity of the infinitely different and that is possible only by the individual citizen’s freedom of unique conscience. In other words, as a citizen of the United States, "I" am “one” and the “many” but the key is that “many” is never a limited number or a group but a potential of infinitely different. Corporations meanwhile are neither made out of single individuals, nor they are made out of infinite number of people (which is impossible) thus their “unity of citizenship” is an artificial (false) unity in terms of our Constitution, hence unconstitutional.
Furthermore, corporations are made out of people (a corporation as a living/breathing entity does not exist), yes, but they cannot all together vote as one entity. Each member of the corporation thus should be allowed to his/her free conscience when it comes to voting and thus must contribute funds individually and be held by the same laws as you and I when it comes to campaign contribution.
What’s more? If “Citizens United” was to be constitutional, we would never have had free and fair elections. The interesting thing is that while it seems to be giving a special privilege to corporations, it is in reality taking away the individual members’ right for free expression of their conscience as citizens. Here is an example: Can a couple (husband, wife) legally donate funds to a campaign and vote as “one” citizens united? No. Even if they both support the same political party, they must each exercise their citizenship as a private individual, free from pressure or influence of their spouse. Walking into a voting booth as a single individual to vote one’s choice in anonymity gives him/her infinitely no less or no more power than any other. That’s equality and that’s freedom. “Citizens United” however denies that anonymity and the freedom to have a right for different opinion to members of corporations. Moreover, if the members of a corporation are supportive of “Citizens United” then they are voluntarily giving up on their most basic rights. This voluntary surrendering of one’s citizenship rights for political and personal gain meanwhile amounts to no less than treason. What else do we call the selling of one’s country for political and self gain? Those rights then we must remember, are never for sale. We, as citizens are responsible for upholding them. It is my responsibility as a citizen to make sure that my conscience is free from influence and oppression when I vote.
As a finishing touch I like to add the following analogy: “Citizens United” to me is like a blanket of snow in which groups of snow-flakes are copies of one another. For a good measure, we may even call them ‘Snowflakes United,’ meaning they are all repetitively the same. I have yet to see such an anomaly in nature, however. I have not because it does not exist and thus, unnatural. And when something is against the laws of nature, I believe we can say that it is unconstitutional. I am of course, basing my claim of the unconstitutionality of the “Citizens United” to my understanding of the laws of nature and our Constitution.
In conclusion, I believe we need to debate/clarify this unnatural law of our (unfortunately) not so Supreme Court before attempting to amend our Constitution.