I can't bring myself to write about health care, and thankfully there are other things to think about.
Yesterday's Supreme Court decision abrogating decades of legal precedents on campaign finance in favor of corporate free speech is hypocritical on three fronts.
The first is easy. Take a bloc of nominees who, during the confirmation process, all made overtures to respect past decisions. Then look at their backers, the same people whose blood boils at the idea of activist judges legislating from the bench. I think the job of judges is to judge, and that there is no way for someone to interpret 'literally' the writings of long dead authors. If there were such a thing as a 'literal' interpretation of the Constitution, why bother with judges at all? Surely software could arbitrate the decisions of the day with greater wisdom and objectivity than some judge. You could make the same argument about so-called fundamentalist religious sects. Maybe we should all own slaves and stone the wicked. But I digress. Yesterday's reversal of precedent proves that any judge can be activist-- it's just a question of what kind of activism.
My second point: So what kind of activism? Self-identified libertarian activism. The spirit behind allowing nearly unlimited corporate donations to federal campaigns is free speech. Last I checked, corporations aren't endowed by the Creator in such a way as to make them equal to all men. They're not people. There. I just took an originalist, (read literal) interpretation of the constitution and came out with the minority's dissent. I (and they) could be considered libertarian conservatives, were it not for the cadre of self-serving hypocrites who have already reserved the term. Until corporations can vote, go to jail, and fight in wars (wait a minute...), I don't count them as the recipients of individual rights found in the first 10 amendments of the constitution.
My third point: What is libertarianism? Definitions vary depending on who you ask. One point on which they generally agree is that libertarians want to avoid the abuse of power over the individual's right to self-determination. The key word here is power. If you're really interested in making sure the powerful don't infringe on your personal rights, you'd better look beyond government as the sole source of that power. If multinational monied interests can freely contribute to campaigns, then our democracy is for sale to the highest bidder. Will my freedom to breathe be restricted by the likes of Exxon now?
In my view, the people who are afraid of the consolidation of power are often looking in the wrong places. Governments restriction of freedom is nothing new, is understood, and is largely predictable. We've devised ingenious systems (like constitutions) to avoid the consolidation of power in government. But power is found wherever the powerful congregate. Whether that is in the halls of government or in the closed boardrooms of the world's biggest multinationals, there is power.
If you're a libertarian who focuses solely on the power of the state, don't be surprised to wake up one day and see that it wasn't the government that took freedom away. It will be the groups that buy government away from the people it was intended to serve.
