The Speech

I've never been much into State of the Union speeches for the simple reason that they tend to be ritualistic and formulistic and rarely provide more than the roughest outline of Events to Come. They exist in the realm of noise.

Last night, His Serenity presented his first State of the Union speech, and by all accounts in the media -- and so far in most of the blogosphere -- it met or even slightly exceeded expectations. There. That's done.

The "controversy" was over Justice Alito mouthing "not true" when Obama criticized the Court for overturning a century of campaign finance law and "opening the floodgates" of corporate financing of campaigns. It was an interesting visual, too. The Court was sitting there in its Majesty, looking stunned and bewildered, surrounded by standing, clapping Democrats who clearly despise what the Court has done.

On that note, I mentioned to somebody the other day who said that she thought the decision would strongly affect elections over time that it was my impression it was intended to have a strong effect on elections this year, and it will.

The Originalists, Federalists, and Constitutional Absolutists will tell us that if the unions and non-profits who are also liberated from campaign funding restrictions by this legislation from the bench cannot compete with corporate interest in the Marketplace of Ideas, then they've lost, too bad so sad, and it is not the role of the Constitution and the Law to pick losers and winners.

That would be Outcome Based, and that would be wrong.

The glaring hypocrisy of their stance would be unbelievable, except for the fact that we have seen so much of it over the long years of Radical Reactionary ascendancy, not simply on the Court, but everywhere.

And of course, these same Originalists, Federalists, and Constitutional Absolutists will opine that the Constitution does not prohibit rule by Private Corporations, and what is not specifically prohibited is allowed. Some, like Scalia and his butt-boy Thomas, will go further and say that Corporate Rule is better than Stupid Democracy because it is more efficient and it allows Government to be minimized in line with the Founders' Intent, as stated on the Golden Plates on which the Constitution is Graven, and translated and interpreted with the Urim and Thummim provided to each and every Originalist, Federalist, and Constitutional Absolutist upon passing the bar. Oyez, oyez, oyez.

On that note, I'd like to mention that as I've wandered through the really very gloomy post Citizens United ruling firmament, I've thought long and hard about why someone like Glenn, for example (but there are quite a few others), would be so rigidly supportive of this ruling on First Amendment grounds despite any other interest and specifically despite any untoward consequence or outcome at all. No matter what, in other words, the ruling reaffirms the First Amendment on prohibiting laws restricting Free Speech, and therefore the ruling is sound, Constitutional, and worthy.

Someone asked Glenn in comments if he would say the same thing if it could be demonstrated to his satisfaction that the ruling had an even chance of destroying representative democracy in this country, however flawed that representative democracy might be today, and his answer was "yes".

His justification:

We don't have a "representative democracy" if we empower the Government to violate the Constitution because we decide that doing so has a chance to avert really bad things from happening.

If you don't like the results or the potential results, change the Constitution, don't authorize the violation of the Constitution to prevent a bad outcome.

Which, from 30,000 feet seems rational, but on the ground it never has been. Constitutional amendments are froughtful things on the one hand, achieving them is very difficult on the other. And in the matter at question, the threat of subsuming representative Government entirely into Corporate Interest, due to, let's say, an inherent flaw in the Constitution itself, a flaw that can be dealt with or even corrected through statute rather than amendment, allowing that threat to play out is more important than correction because it is "Constitutional."

While the Constitution may not be a suicide pact like the Declaration of Independence, it is not graven on Golden Plates and no Urim and Thummim are distributed to Originalists and Federalists and their Absolutist companions to correctly interpret it.

If statute can correct a flaw or present danger that a Reactionary Court may reveal in their wisdom and reversals, then statute should be employed, as it has been routinely over the centuries. While Glenn and others acknowledge there may be statutory remedies to this danger that don't involve violations of the Sacred Constitution -- such as public funding of campaigns -- their actual position is that the danger isn't all that great in any case, since we've been under de facto Corporate rule for a long time as it is and the world hasn't ended, so why get all riled up when the Court says that it's OK? Maybe it is OK, hunh?

Sure, maybe it is. But I go back to Mario's impassioned speech from the steps of Sproul Hall, in which he declares the opposite, that it's not OK for corporate interest to supercede the public interest, and it's not OK for public institutions like the University to yield to corporate demands for product, in this case, students conditioned and trained to serve Corporate masters. We are human beings. We are not products.

It was electrifying 45 years ago because nobody had quite crystalized the issue in quite that way in connection with a public institution which was founded and ostensibly operated in the public interest on behalf of all the people.

And yet it was functionally operating as a conditioning and training academy to provide product (graduates) not to advance the human condition, but to advance the Corporate Interest above all. A case could be made it still operates that way; perhaps more so now than ever before. Even though the Free Speech Movement achieved most of its stated objectives by forcing the University to remove its restrictions on (unauthorized) political speech on and near the campus.

There was a huge irony during the 45th Anniversary commemoration of the Free Speech Movement last December when a parade of speakers on the steps of Sproul Hall was interrupted by shouting students claiming it was their campus and their speech and everyone else could STFU. It was especially ironic given that the speaker who was temporarily shouted down was pointing out that despite the success of the Free Speech Movement, speech on campus is even more restricted now than it was 45 years ago, in that there would be no way to host a Nazi on campus or Condoleezza Rice and hear them out and argue the errors of their ways because they would be shouted down, or not allowed to speak at all because their views aren't popular or politically correct. He said that 45 years ago, those people or people like them would have been allowed to speak, and well informed argument would have demonstrated their errors.

I think he was missing the point just as Glenn and those like him are missing the point in the current context. Indeed, unpopular and political speech was allowed on the Berkeley campus 45 years ago under strictly controlled conditions. In a controlled forum or a classroom, there was ordinarily no problem (well, that's a stretch; communists were in a limbo and probably would not have been invited, though if they were, they would probably have been allowed to speak, though there would have been an outcry, especially among polititicans.) Prohibited was political speech and advocacy in uncontrolled and public areas like Sproul Plaza and Bancroft Avenue. The rationale, say what you will about it, being that a public institution could not sponsor -- by permitting -- public advocacy of partisan political positions on its property. In the classroom or a forum, fine, but not publicly. The public institution had to remain strictly nonpartisan in public. The students said, no. That political speech and advocacy in public on and near the campus was not sponsorship by the University in and of itself, it was an exercise of Free Speech as guaranteed by the Constitution which the University should not be prohibiting.

Yet interestingly 45 years later some of those who participated in the Free Speech Movement believe -- sincerely -- that political speech was actually more free on campus before the Free Speech Movement than afterwards, that in point of fact the prohibitions of public advocacy of political positions on campus helped enable and encourage a fuller debate on the issues "behind the gates."

It's a fair opinion, and in fact, that was the position of the University in 1964 in opposing the student demands for Liberation. They were already free. According to the University. Within bounds.

And this gets us back to what the Court was doing in "Liberating" corporations from a century of "oppression" of their political speech. Of course there hasn't really been any such thing -- Corporations are perfectly free to "speak" as they choose and when they choose. The restrictions were on what they could spend on speech and advocacy and when, ostensibly to level the playing field so as not to completely drown out others who might wish to speak on issues of importance to them.

The effect of "liberating" corporations (and unions and nonprofits) from the "oppression" they've been so horribly suffering under all these years, will be to enable those with the most money and access to the megaphone of the media to shout down and drown out any and all counter speech. So it was a hundred years ago when the first campaign finance reform legislation was enacted, so it will be again.

I learned a long time ago that he or she with the loudest voice in ordinary situations tends to rule. It was axiomatic in situations like board meetings and task forces and so forth that he or she who made the most ruckus in the loudest voice got their way.

The obvious intent of the Court in "liberating" Corporate speech was to give them their way. Again.

The speaker at the 45th Anniversary commemoration of the Free Speech Movement decried what had happened with the liberation of student political speech and advocacy -- it meant that unpopular views were not being heard or debated any more like they used to be. And to prove the point, he was shouted down. At least for a while. In fact, he was able to complete his thought eventually.

Liberating the students from prohibitions on their free speech on campus does not have the same effect as liberating corporations from their "oppression", however, despite what may appear to be superficial similarities. While it is rude to shout down unpopular speakers/points of view in a campus setting (and many, many have made the point about how rude it is), those speakers and views have numerous alternative means to get their message out; students are by no means hermetically sealed off from hearing "unpopular" or "politically incorrect" views -- they are culturally speaking immersed in them -- and they will always face challenges for being rude to other speakers when they are rude.

Corporate liberation has the almost opposite effect. They operate in the context of national political debate, and their liberation means that they can fully control that debate. What they do not want said or heard they can effectively prohibit. It's not a matter of being rude or of people having alternatives if they don't like the Corporate Message. The only practical alternative for a public that doesn't want to hear the Corporate Message is to turn it off. By their control of access to the Podium if you will, they determine what will be said and heard and what won't.

This is even worse than the situation on campus before the Free Speech Movement, because at least the University had a public interest in providing opportunities for a wide ranging debate to occur; Corporate interest has no public interest, and has no interest in a wide ranging debate. They want their view presented and none other. Corporate "liberation" means -- almost by definition -- that everyone else's liberty to speak and be heard is restricted or absent altogether. In other words, Corporate "liberation" means "suppression" for everyone else.

That seems to be the Court's desired outcome. The abstract adherence to the First Amendment results in its practical cancellation. Well, how about that! How nice!

And I would go farther and suggest that is not just the Court's desired outcome, it is also Glenn's and the Absolutists he gravitates toward.

We can speculate about why that might be the case. What is it about Corporate domination and rule that is ultimately so attractive? Why is a broken down and halting representative democracy so... unattractive?

We can see ideological reasons for the Radical 5 to want this outcome. They are corporatists, and as far as they are concerned, Corporate Rule is best. Corporate Rule enables "government" (as in representative democracy) to shrink, because it is no longer needed, except, perhaps for its defense and adjudication functions. It becomes an accessory, the way the Founders (supposedly) meant it to be. And the masses no longer have any governmental outlet or mechanism for their interests to be realized. Government serves the Corporations just like the masses are meant to do. I get that ideological point.

On the other hand, why would someone like Glenn support essentially the same thing?

Could it be because he doesn't trust the masses to do the right thing if they have the power, he doesn't respect the broken down representative democracy that is being trampled under the Corporate boot anyway, and he sees in the potential simplicity and efficiency of Corporate Rule a way to achieve desirable personal and political objectives? In other words, depending on what you want and who you are, Corporate Rule may be just the ticket, whereas a rough and crumbling representative democracy may be just the opposite? It's the Future™ brought to you by our Corporate Sponsors, and it's better than anything Stupid Democracy can come up with.

I don't know that that's the case among those who celebrate the ruling, including Glenn, but it wouldn't surprise me.