You literally cannot make this stuff up. The democrats in Congress – the number one champion of the citizen’s right to protest and say whatever hate filled thing he wants (as long as it agrees with their sensibility. 🙂 )…now wish to eliminate the first amendment to the Constitution. They’ll replace it instead with the “People’s Rights Amendment” (I also typed People’s Republic of America…the overlap was hard to ignore). This new amendment will rewrite the first amendment such that its protections only apply to individuals engaged in individual activities.
This comes on the heals of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizen’s United case – in which the Court found that corporations had access to the same rights as their individual owners under the law, citing common law precedents going back to the dawn of the Republic. Enraged democrats in Washington evidently now believe that the only way to extract the hand of big business from campaigns, from political discourse, and from Constitutional protections against property seizure and other nuisances that get in the way of Congress taking total control of the marketplace and the political sphere…is to change the Constitution.
Now ordinarily, I’d be thrilled. The left is embracing Constitutional law? Acting on the system from within and in a lawful manner in order to get what they want, rather than playing with rules of procedure, making shadow appointments and setting up unelected bureaucracies to do their bidding? I would call that a huge win for the Conservative movement if the mockery they weren’t making a mockery of the spirit of the Constitution in their latest efforts to reform it to their liking. But…we can put that aside for a moment. I have some questions for Democrats.
1) If groups of people assembling and organizing no longer enjoy Constitutional protections guaranteed by the first amendment, what happens when a conservative government chooses to outlaw the holding of budgets by any labor union? The original legalization of labor unions was based on first amendment protections and subsequent rulings in the Supreme Court that defended the unions’ rights to donate to political campaigns at their own discretion were based on the first amendment, among others.
2) If corporations have no first amendment rights, shouldn’t we then be able to enact legislation making it illegal to, say, advocate for planned parenthood? Each state has a Planned Parenthood wing operating as a non-profit corporation (yes…the non-profits count as a group operation and would be removed from Constitutional protections by the new amendment). They enjoy government rights to advocate for their organization at political rallies, on the airwaves, and in our schools. What happens to that when a conservative government decides that such speech is unlawful?
3) What about religious affiliations? We would retain our right to be Catholic or Buddhist in our own homes, but…what the Catholic Church have the right to speak to the political issues of the day en mase? Could the government choose to make it illegal for Catholics to organize into faith-based charities and colleges? And yes, Nancy…there are plenty of liberals who still enjoy their religious freedoms. Just because you don’t personally believe, doesn’t mean your constituents would enjoy such changes.
4) What about all of the extremely powerful liberal PACs and lobbying organizations that have gotten immeasurable “progressive” gains inside the beltway out of the most conservative of our elected officials? Everything from carbon emission standards in cars to expanded powers granted to the IRS to regulatory reform of mortgage banking came to us in large part due to lobbying and political organization from the minds of unelected philosophers and bureaucrats who would lose their right to first amendment protection after your new amendment took hold.
People are collective in their thinking. Always have been…always will be. Most of the things we do in life are not individual – they require cooperation and the pooling of resources. Apple was largely driven by Steve Jobs before his untimely death. Rest assured that, although thousands of people had stake in the company, it reflected Jobs’ vision. Taking the rights of an individual away from a corporation is the same thing is taking those rights away from its CEO. But you won’t see it that way. At least you might see my point that all of the other institutions that you actually respect are collective in nature too.
Lord, Congressional Democrats are idiots.
everymatt 