DRED SCOTT and his wife Harriet were slaves with two young daughters who filed suit for their freedom in 1846. Their master, an army surgeon, had brought them to Illinois, where slavery was banned. At the time, slaves who entered free territory were legally free.
The Scotts won their case. But their master appealed — all the way to the Supreme Court. The resulting ruling is widely considered to be the court’s worst: Dred Scott, the court found, was nothing but property, no matter where he went.
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Only when people find themselves on the wrong side of the fence surrounding that gated community will they ever rise up. I'm not hopeful. Good points Farah.
I've yet to hear a solid argument for C.U. The initial argument, that it's a free speech issue just doesn't hold any water. If the only people allowed this "free speech" are the uber-wealthy, then where is the free speech for the poor, middle class, or even upper middle class?
Thanks, Giermund.
Citizen's United simply said that political speech cannot be censored. It was a good ruling, and one which will stand. Comparing it to Dred Scott is scandalous. It is just in the liberal play book to compare anything they do not like to slavery or naziism. Sometimes it works. But most people see right through it.
Farah is wrong in stating that people fought and died to preserve slavery.
It's wrong to say that people fought and died to preserve slavery? How do you take that piece out of the Civil War? Most people would say that the Civil War was mostly about slavery, despite any circumlocutions conjured up by a small handful of naysayers.
Citizens United was not "simply" anything. It subverts democracy by putting more speech into the hands of the wealthy than into mine Or yours.
The soldiers of the southern states fought and died because their homeland was invaded. Very few actually owned slaves. It was the genius of President Lincoln to frame the war as one about slavery, and slavery was certainly one of the reasons the southern states succeeded. But the fight was about protecting one's home from invading forces.
You need to go back and re-read your history. Lincoln fought over succession, while he in fact did not like slavery it was not his original intent to emancipate the slaves. Abolitionists made the arguement but it didn't dominate the essence of the war until they were both well into it. There were many reasons for the war outside of slavery. Read the letters of Calhoun and you will see many of the economic underpinnings. You will in fact see many remarks close to the southern elites remarks of today.
Citizens United basically restated that "money was speech". If you like to be dominated by the wealthy it was a great decision. If you dont' not so much. From a legal standpoint there would seem to be a basis for it. But if you like "democracy" not so much.
Richmond12, as I pointed out in my column, 75% of whites did not own slaves. That doesn't mean they didn't fight to preserve their way of life - which was an economy entirely based on slavery. Why did the South break away in the first place? It had everything to do with slavery, an issue which dominated American politics for the previous 30 years. If you go back to the Lincoln Douglas debates, what were they really talking about? Dred Scott. Slavery. To say that it had to do with something else is just not honest. At the time the Dred Scott decision came down, there was another decision - Lemmon vs New York - that was making its way to the Supreme Court, with very similar issues. Lemmon was a slaverowner who was traveling to Texas, via New York City, with his 8 slaves. They were staying in a Manhattan hotel room, and a knock came at the door. It was the authorities, serving papers that freed those slaves. So the uneasy compromise the north and south had crafted over slavery was eroding. If we were going to remain one country, we had to decide which it was going to be: slave or free. When Lincoln was elected, the South saw the writing on the wall. Are you saying that Lincoln shouldn't have preserved the union? Or that the president doesn't have the right to send troops to a rebellious part of the country?
"Richmond" By the way there was nothing whatsoever about the "lost cause" that was noble. Those in the south who fought "for slavery" did nothing except to attempt to promote a hideous institution. An institution so corrupt that its impact upon southern culture is still with us today.
As a congressman, Mahkey could introduce an amendment to the Constitution repealing Citizens United whenever he likes. Why hasn't he?
Good point. He also missed the opportunity to co-sponsor the DISCLOSEE Act, although he did vote in favor of it. He also did not co-sponsor McGovern's Peoples' Rights Amendment in 2011. That bill is stuck (killed) in committee because the Democrats are in the minority in the House. Whether or not those two bills are good legislation or bad legislation is debatable, but while the House remains in Republican Control, no bills to overturn or otherwise amend Citzens United will get to the floor for a vote.
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Good article today. Thanks for putting it together.
He should have found another example.
There aren't many.
I think it's surprisingly apt, especially when you look at the comparison of a tiny percentage of the moneyed class convincing everyone else that something which is completely against their best interest is worth fighting to the death for. How many Tea Party demonstrations did you see with people holding signs declaring their willingness to use a "2nd Amendment solution" to prevent the government from helping them?
There's a long history of the wealthy convincing sheep to willingly go through a lifetime of being sheared and then happily putting their head on the block.
A "clumsy" comparison? No, it was right on. And like Dred Scott and slavery, whether you agree with the comparison or not depends on what you think of slavery... or a monied plutocracy. Citizens United has nothing to do with free speech, and has everything to do with protecting democracy from the poisonous scum of powerful monied interests. The point Markey was making is that Citizens United has the same place in American society today that Dred Scott did in the 19th century. There were a lot of people back then who thought the Dred Scott decision was perfectly reasonable--slaves are nothing but chattel to be freely bought and sold, just like selling a cow or a wagon. Fortunately, there were enough Americans back then who found that idea disgusting and reprehensible. The parallels with Citizens United today are pretty obvious...
"Parallels are pretty obvious..."? I guess as obvious as the evils of slavery and the evils or free speech. Someohow I miss what is obvious here, maybe is a bit more cloudy than you suggest.
"And in both cases, the court put the interests of a tiny, powerful group above the interests of the nation..."
The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights apply to all Americans, even those people your consider a "tiny group" and their power or lack of it has no play in that.
A right to own slaves is not listed in the Bill of Rights, but the right to free expression is. Thus the wisdom and appropriateness of the Citizens United finding. Any attempt to compare the two, to find commonality where such a fundamental and powerful difference exists, is simple bizarre.
"The question before us is not whether money in politics is as great an evil as slavery. The question is: What can ordinary people do to fight against this disastrous court decision?" The answer is simple and obvious, prepare and pass a constitutional amendment to restrict the free speech of some of the people. Good luck passing that!
The free speech issue doesn't work. Corporations are not people, no matter what Mitt Romney says (I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one). The fact that the super wealthy can silence dissent by spending huge amounts of money is the EXACT oppopsite of free speech. Where is the free speech for the poor? How can their voices be heard in the same way as the big businesses that can now influence far too much of our culture.?
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The SEIU gave the most money of any organization in the last election cycle. Other unions also gave heavily. And why shouldn't they, if they have the money? The constitution does not limit free speech to individuals. Collections of individuals qualify as well. And to the idiot who said he'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one, check Texas' bankruptcy records. Corporations are dissolved in Texas every day of the week.
Are you so naive that you equate a busines going bankrupt as being executed? Brush up on your bankruptcy law. A business being bankrupt is more like a killer being found guilty, being absolved of all liability and his victims being killed AGAIN!
Unions represent less than twelve percent of American workers, lets stop pretending they have pockets even remotely as deep as Big Business. That's why organized labor worked so hard against C.U.
"We’re not going to have a civil war about Citizens United, but that doesn’t mean we should let it stand."
Perhaps not over Citizens United, but civil wars have erupted over far less, and we are every bit as polarized as we were in 1860. I would not dismiss the threat of a new civil war in this country too lightly. The militia movements, 'preppers', and various white supremacist groups have been itching for such an ignition for quite some time; it's never far from the surface.
"Every bit as polarized"? Not really. There's a small contingent of loonies like Ted Nugent and the head of the NRA that like to whip their acolytes into a frenzy, mostly because it puts money in their pockets, but when push comes to shove they're going the way of the Do-do. College freshmen who identify themselves as Republicans are more than 80% likely to consider themselves Democrats when they exit college. Republicans like to use this statistic as an illustration that colleges are overwhelmingly liberal leaning when in fact most educated people simply vote Democrat. The more ubiquitous a college education becomes, the less likely we'll be saddled with Republican leaders.
We'll have to agree to disagree regarding how polarized. If anything, I think we are more polarized than in 1860.
More money equals a louder voice, plain and simple. And unfortunately, given the state of political awareness of the average, busy, working person, the sound bite means alot.
We're now into four decades of fighting over campaign finance that were initially inspired by Democratic fears that the Republicans had gotten the last final fundraising advantage and that limits had to be instituted to level the playfield. These limits included almost nothing on the ways Democrats raised money but significant limits on the ways Republicans did thus setting in motion the original lawsuit that produced the system with which we are now saddled. All Citiizens United really is (and this wasn't actually so much about finance as it was about documentaries and the ability to screen those during campaign season so it ended up being more of a speech case than a campaign finance case but it does have the latter impact as well) is the latest way that restrictions on speech in the name of good intentions get beaten back. In my opinion, the original Democratic intention of getting money out of politics was a good one but ask anyone in either party if they really want that ? They do not. They mostly just complain about what the other party (usually the Republicans) innovates with. This is why there are no stories in the Globe or other pro-Democratic papers about the Obama Administration's funding raising effort on behalf of OFA (for 500k in contributions to OFA, you get access to a sitting President) but Citizens United is a threat to the Republic. I seem to recall that when the W Administration did some similar things the pro-Democratic media was screaming about them just as the pro- Repub media is now. Personally, I think they're right about each other but wrong about themselves.
Citizens United was well-decided, unless you favor political censorship. In 1976 in Buckley vs Valeo, SCOTUS decided that political donation (money) equals free speech. That means it's covered by the First Amendment unless, like falsely yelling fire in a crowded theatre, it's intrinsically evil. While political donations could possibly be corrupting in nature, they are not necessarily so. One should never be quick to dispose of any of our inalienable rights, especially free speech. The Supremes ruled in Citizens that people have the right to free speech no matter how they are organized (i.e. corporations, unions, etc.); they never said the "Corporations are People" as has been popularly claimed. If one is offended by the outcome, go back and look at the original arguments that the Department of Justice made to the Supremes; the litigator actually claimed that the government could ban political books in certain situations! That type of claim of government power should be rejected and rejected soundly.
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Let's not forget that the Citizen's United case arose from a 2008 movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton. Of course it was right and proper for the federal government to censor this film that dared to criticize a sitting United States Senator. Why, if we allow that, then the next thing you know people will be making films critical of the President! The horror!