Reply #16: An Excellent Piece, Ma'am: Thank You for Sharing It [View All]

[The Magistrate]

To regard corporations as persons under the Constitution is monstrous as it is foolish.

The problem with corporate person-hood taken as equal to a citizen in public and political life is, as someone once said, 'they have neither souls to be damned nor bodies to be kicked". The corporation is a legal device for pooling capital and limiting the personal liability of people who devote capital to the corporation for its debts and actions. That is all, and that is hardly a sound footing for participation in political life. Taken as a 'person', a corporation is pretty much a sociopath, since it is chartered to have no responsibility save its own self-aggrandizement, whatever that may cost others. What actually happens when a corporation is treated as a citizen in political life is that it simply amplifies the political views of those persons in a position to control its expenditures, and make them in effect a nobility, worth in political terms thousands, even millions, of citizens, by virtue of the capital they control. This certainly is a breeding ground for oligarchic rule, and antithetical to democracy.