The Fly in the Ointment: A Short Reflection on the Fallacy of Citizens United*

Thesis: Human beings, people in common parlance,

are moral beings – don’t take my word for it –

read the philosophers – 

Corporations are by definition amoral**

therefore they cannot be people – 

citizens – 

or good ones, at any rate – 

by definition corporations exist for profit

all other considerations

all other constraints

on human behavior – 

kinship

altruism

sacrifice

even love

must fall by the wayside

for there is no profit in such things

sometimes there’s even loss

Life is not a balance sheet

and corporations are not people

__________

*See Citizens United for the text of the Supreme Court's opinion upholding a First Amendment right of free speech for corporations as citizens.

**A nice way for people in polite society to say immoral, for sooner or later, that not governed in its own view by the mores of a society will violate those mores.