Whoa.

Late into this morning (which was really only just a few hours ago), a friend and I were discussing the recent Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC which brought us to the topic of Corporate Personhood. “But Kevin,” you ask. “How could you even go to sleep after something that exciting?” I know. But it gets even better.

The thrust of our conversation ended in an agreement that the tradition of Corporate Personhood in America was patently ridiculous, extra-Constitutional, and destructive. It wasn’t that corporations should enjoy no protections, we concluded. We both felt that the idea of a corporation being treated like a human person, though, afforded a corporation undue advantages over individuals and even smaller companies. Besides, the legal precedent for it was shaky at best.

Then I wake up to this: Post Politics: Tea partiers should reject ‘corporate personhood’

It was actually a court reporter who, in an attempt to summarize the case Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, coined the term. Author Thom Hartmann explains in Common Dreams: “In writing up the case’s headnote — a commentary that has no precedential status — the Court’s reporter, a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis, opened the headnote with the sentence: ‘The defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ ”

[...]

No one is saying corporations should have no expectations of legal protection, but to assert they deserve the rights of human beings is absurd.

A corporation cannot long for a woman or love his children. A corporation cannot feel pain or remorse and doesn’t have to die. Corporations clearly are not persons in any sense of the word. If we are all truly “endowed by our Creator” with certain rights, there can be no rights for corporations.

[...]

Corporations don’t seek to influence the government to promote a libertarian utopia. They get involved with government to gain a competitive edge, either through regulation or subsidy. All the corporate money in our politics does not go to secure a free market, despite what some on the anti-corporate left will tell you. The very last thing big corporations want is a fair or free market. Big Business plays politics to secure its position and keep the little guy out.

Like I said, whoa.

I’ve never even had a discussion on Corporate Personhood before last night. I’m at this very moment checking my home for Kleinheider’s bugs.

He makes a great point in that last paragraph. A distrust in Big Government can, if one is unprincipled, lead to an inordinate trust in Big Business. Yet Big Business does not seek to play fair. It seeks to win, and will do so using whatever advantage it can get that increases the bottom line. I’ll write to expand on this later, but considering a corporation to be a person brings with it a whole slew of issues, among them that it puts corporations in a position to crowd out smaller competition and buy politicians from the local sheriff to the President himself.

I’m with Kleinheider on this, and it’s definitely an issue that crosses political lines (though that alone is never reason enough to earn my support). Tea Parties should reject the long-standing tradition of corporate personhood.