E Pluribus Unum

by shep

It has always struck me as odd when libertarians express their hostility toward Democrats for their approach to regulatory government. Beside the obvious fact that it has consistently proved essential for the health and safety of individual Americans and the reliable functioning of markets, what would so aggravate liberty rights advocates about regulation of industry? It took me a while to realize – H/T to Trey and Matt – that they have been completely indoctrinated with belief in “corporate personhood.”

Yesterday’s Supreme Court action points up the inevitable conflict libertarians face if they continue to fail to recognize the inherent differences and conflict between the constitutional rights of individual persons and the supposed rights of corporations. These rights were conflated in the late 19th century by corporate lawyers and judges representing railroad interests but have no basis in the US Constitution. Simply put, corporations aren’t “persons,” in whom all constitutional rights are vested.

For liberals, nothing could be more obvious than the intrinsic conflict between the rights of the individual and the rights of corporate entities. Mainly, this comes in the form of the complete indifference of the corporation to the rights of the individual – ironically, the opposite of the libertarian – and the circumstantial conflicts that occur when amoral corporations seek to use people to make things and sell them to other people, irrespective of the benefit of the making or the selling to people.

Liberal Democrats understand that not only is corporate power the real threat to individual rights, the critical political and public policy issues essentially revolve around the question of whether government winds up being an instrument of industry, often working against the interests of the individual, or a bulwark against the abuse of the rights of individuals by industry.

So now libertarians know. Republicans are finally making it clear what they successfully obscured with their silly “free-market” ideology and rhetoric these many years. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the constitutionally guaranteed liberty rights of individuals, relative to the corporate-created liberty rights of industry.

I wonder if libertarians will finally see how they’ve been fooled and used in time to stop this Republican-led, anti-individual-rights cultural revolution before it’s too late. If they do, there’s a political party that already shares their conviction about individual liberty rights.