John Hood offers another must-read column today. This time he clears the air with respect to the Left’s argument about last week’s Supreme Court ruling on political campaign spending, which affirms free speech rights. You might be surprised to learn that Hood writes, yep, the Left is correct: corporation aren’t people. But there’s more:
You see, all citizens have equal rights under the Constitution. They enjoy these rights as individuals and are free to exercise them as individuals or as groups, in any voluntary association they choose. Because corporations are bundles of contracts among various individuals – shareholders, managers, employees, vendors, and customers – those individuals retain the right to associate or not to associate with each other. Because shareholders yield the day-to-day control of their funds to managers to maximize their return on investment, managers have significant leeway to decide how best to deploy those funds – to develop new products, attract new talent, acquire new assets, earn goodwill through charitable contributions, or seek to secure public policies they deem most likely to maximize the profitability of the business.
The Left is oddly mesmerized by the notion that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to expend dollars on politics because corporations aren’t people. Right – corporations aren’t people. They are inanimate contracts among people. Those people have First Amendment rights that government cannot be allowed to abrogate just because it doesn’t like what’s being said, published, broadcast, or Tweeted.
This one’s a keeper.
