Of Constitutional Law and the Loss of Our Nation

Senor Lopilopo is a self-parodying character. Sometimes he and by extension I, his alter ego, otherwise known as the "real me," is serious. This is one of those times.

I have been ruminating the recent Supreme Court decision regarding corporate campaign contributions. The Court feels that corporations, as persons, have freedom of speech and therefore should have no limits in expression.

Conservatives see this as a victory. Big money has even more sway and fewer fetters in influencing elections. They may have so much influence that even the electorate no longer matters because the only messages the electorate will hear will be the ones they want them to hear.

We can moan all day and night about this being the end of democracy and perhaps the end of the world as we know it. We can also accept it as the inevitable influence of big money, view the political landscape, and map our strategies accordingly.

It is a bad decision. It is probably correct in a narrow sense in terms of Constitutional Law, although insisting that a corporation is a person defies logic, but not everything that is legal is right just as not everything that is illegal is wrong. The Supreme Court once said that slavery was right and helping slaves escape was wrong because it involved stealing someone else's "property."

This is a decision that may very well come to haunt conservatives. The Republican coalition requires the active participation of social conservatives, but will it when Chinese and Indian corporations with ties in the American economy buy our elections? Who knows? Within a generation, teaching the Bible may become illegal. American kids will be quoting Chairman Mao in school. They'll all be good little card-carrying flag-waving Communists. Of course, America will still be called America. It will still be free and independent on paper, but the tanks will roll when we disagree with Chinese policy. Does this sound like a good thing to you or a nightmare?

What do we do? What hope is left? We need to call upon our leaders to draft a Constitutional Amendment that safegards true freedom of speech in which every voice and perspective can be heard above the din caused by corporate influence peddling. We need to revisit this issue and remove the concept of corporations as persons. We need to close the gates to political influence from other nations. And we need to do this fast before the nightmare becomes reality.