The Death of Democracy

The Supreme Court of the United States has delivered a real blow to democracy.

Today's announcement from the Court has overturned laws restricting the amount of money corporations can spend in political campaign. The majority says this is a violation of the First Amendment — freedom of speech. This is not good news. Yes, it continues the American tradition of treating corporations as the equivalent to a human person, but there is the rub. Corporations may be managed by people and have boards and stockholders, but the corporation itself is not a person. It is only treated as one in law so that it can own property and assets, and borrow and trade.

While, the American origins of corporate law may have been laudable, when taken to extreme as the Court has done, it creates a monster.

The justices have in effect said that huge amounts of money can be spent by corporations to pursuade voters. The special interests of corporate America is already well represented in Washington. To enlarge the voice, vote and impact of these corporations is a huge mistake. Where will the human person find his or her voice in this forest of corporate political media? The citizen even more silenced and more marginalized from the political process. How will the playing field be even remotely level for small nonprofits, for small business, for the average Joe and Jill?

A criticism frequently voiced by independent voters today is that niether political party represents their interests or viewpoints. We know the difficulty of a third party candidate breaking into the public forum amidst of our stronghold of the two party system. Today's decision will make that even more difficult and unlikely.

Where does the answer lie?

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. That is not to say there isn't one, but it certainly is not an easy one.

The answer lives in citizens, voters and individual btreaking out the doldrums of a complacency and nothing can change, organizing themselves into a force to be heard. We cannot rely upon institutions to make the case for the human person. People will have to band together and organize to do that for themselves.

The motto must be — nothing will be changed if I do not speak, and nothing can be said loudly enough to be heard if I do not organize and band with others.