To the editor:
In response to your editorial supporting the recent Supreme Court decision to expand the right of free speech to include corporations, I would like to offer the following counterpoint:
The right to free speech is granted in our Bill of Rights to all of the people in this country. However, corporations are not people. Therefore, the right to free speech does not extend to them as evidenced by nearly 200 years of previous Supreme Court rulings on this matter.
The original Supreme Court decision on this issue was written nearly 200 years ago and has been upheld ever since until this latest ruling.
Furthermore, during his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts repeatedly said he believed in upholding the opinions of previous courts. Now he goes and reverses himself in one of his first major opinions, which causes one to question the truthfulness of all of his previous statements.
In addition, this decision abolishes a very important piece of bipartisan legislation regarding campaign finance called the McCain-Feingold Bill. At a time when this country needs more bipartisan legislation, the conservative court overrules one of the few bipartisan pieces of legislation to come out of Washington in a long time. I thought conservatives disliked activist courts, but this is an activist decision.
Furthermore, because many corporations today are multinational, this decision opens the doors for foreign involvement in U.S. elections. If an American corporation is owned by a corporation in another country, say communist China, does this mean the communists will now have a voice in American elections? If only true American corporations can participate in elections, then who will verify which corporations are truly American?
Does it mean another bureaucracy to verify that only true American corporations are participating in the election process?
If we give corporations the right to free speech will they eventually claim they are being discriminated against because they don't have other rights like, say, the right to vote, the right to bear arms, etc.?
It's bad enough that we owe trillions of dollars to China, now the Supreme Court goes and compounds the problem by giving communists a vehicle to impact American elections.
How can a conservative paper like yours support this patently un-American, pro-communistic Supreme Court decision?
Jack Oliver
Acton
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