The more money you have, the more free speech you have. That's what our Supreme Court has just decided. In an Orwellian decision that brings to mind the book Animal Farm, in which the ruling pigs asserted "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," the highest authority in this great nation has declared that very rich companies have greater rights to freedom of speech than you do. Seriously.
Right wingers have long decried what they called "activist judges" who legislate from the bench. They have argued - and rightly so - that the proper role of the courts is not to make laws, but to interpret them. But this week the Supreme Court did exactly that. Overturning years of judicial precedent to the contrary, which had previously held that the constitution protects individual rights of citizens, in a 5-4 ruling, the court's conservative majority decided that corporations and unions have the right to freedom of speech, and that spending money to influence voters is a form of free speech, and that any limits on the amount of money corporations and unions spend is an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech.
The conservative justices ignored the fact that corporations and unions are never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights. Any reasonable interpretation of the intention of the founding fathers would hold that freedom of speech was a guarantee for people, not organizations. The court's ruling allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they wish, effectively burying the voices of less affluent individuals, even though corporations can't vote, be elected, or serve as elected officials.
What makes this particularly unnerving is that individuals do have limits to how much they can contribute to campaigns. That means that, according to the Supreme Court, corporations and unions have more free speech than you do. (Thus, some animals are more equal than others.) Even political parties are limited to how much money they can spend on a campaign. But Exxon Mobile, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and General Electric can spend all they want - and effectively buy any election they want. Tracking recent national elections, the trend is clear: Whoever spends the most money nearly always wins.
Justices who dissented from the ruling, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, pointed out that this overturns a 200-year old recognition by Chief Justice Marshall that corporations are artificial creatures of the state, subject to government oversight to ensure they do not abuse the special privileges granted to them. Shame on Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito for moving this nation in exactly the opposite direction from that which our founding fathers envisioned - one in which the people had power, not the elite.
This is a huge blow to individual freedoms - and one which should chills down all of our spines - whether conservative or progressive. My guess is that we'll hear little outcry once we move past the 24-hour news cycle. And if anyone does cry out about it, the voice will surely be drowned by the overwhelming surplus of free speech that is now guaranteed to the rich corporations.
Is this the America we want? We all have equal rights to freedom of speech. But speech isn't free when we buy it in marketing communications, so, just as Orwell said, the richest are more equal than others.