Welcome to Fascist America.  The recent Supreme Court decision, (Citizens United vs Federal Elections Commission) allowing corporations unlimited funding of political advertising, hands our election process directly over to the corporations that already control so much of our daily lives.  Sadly, the court’s ruling is one more step on the path to the Corporate States of America. 

I am baffled when the radical right-wing, ultra-conservative “tea-baggers” (totally oblivious that their chosen name is actually slightly salacious sexual slang) bandy about words like “communism”, “socialism”, “fascism”  quite interchangeably, obviously unaware of the actual definitions of the terms.  Usually their protest is that liberals are responsible for America’s descent into fascism.  Quite the contrary.  The idea of “liberal fascism” is an oxymoron that cannot exist; fascism is an extreme right philosophy.  For an accurate definition of fascism, we need look no further than one of the founders of the movement, Benito Mussolini:  “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”  Now, thanks to the Roberts Court, we are closer than ever. 

The paradox is it’s the Republican Party that has, since Nixon, steadily moved the country into fascism – one of the very -isms they say we should fear.  And fear it we should, indeed.  The government was the one last bastion of hope for protection from the over-reach and abuses of corporations.  The dissolution of workers’ rights, the termination of consumer protections, the reversal of anti-trust laws, the erosion of environmental regulations, the proposed privatization of Social Security, the out-sourcing of the US military, the deregulation of the banking industry, regulatory agencies staffed by corporate employees, corporate lobbyists writing legislation – all Republican priorities; all symptoms of the rise of corporatism in America.  Privatization expressly means turning a government function over to a corporation – which is the precise definition of fascism – which is the explicit goal of the Republican Party.  If you fear fascism, you should fear the Republican Party. 

I am bemused when the very people who claim the government is too inept to run a national health insurance program claim we should fear government intervention in our lives.  “Big Brother” is here and it’s not the government.  AT&T knows every phone number you’ve ever dialed; Chase knows every purchase you’ve ever made with your credit card; Google knows every word you’ve ever searched on the Internet.  It’s not the government that comes between you and your doctor; it’s United Healthcare that says “Sorry, that’s not covered.”  You don’t decide what food you’ll buy at the grocery store, it’s ConAgra and Monsanto.  You don’t decide what clothes you’re going to wear this spring, it’s VF Corporation and Wal-Mart.  You don’t decide what to watch on television, it’s GE and Time Warner.  Those decisions are all made for you by huge multi-national corporations.  And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, Exxon Mobil will decide who represents you in Washington and Madison and possibly on your local city council. 

A corporation is NOT a person and should not have the same rights as the individual citizens of the United States.  Under the US Constitution, corporations have no rights; the word “corporation” does not even appear in the Constitution.  There are only two parties to the Constitution: “we, the people”, who are sovereign and have constitutional rights; and the government, which is accountable to the people and has duties it must perform to the satisfaction of the people. Corporations are chartered by the individual states and are merely a legal construct with only such rights as may be assigned by the people of each state.  Technically, corporations are property:  by ownership of the stock (shares) of a company, the corporation is the property of the stockholders. 

It’s only been through Supreme Court rulings that corporations have gotten to the stature they now enjoy.  Slowly and quietly, the Court has taken away your civil liberties under the Bill of Rights and transferred those privileges to corporations.  These now include the First Amendment human right of free speech (including corporate "speech" to influence politics - something that was a felony in most states prior to 1886), the Fourth Amendment human right to privacy (so a chemical company has successfully sued to prevent the EPA from performing surprise inspections - while retaining the right to perform surprise inspections of its own employees' bodily fluids and phone conversations), and the Fourteenth Amendment right to live free of discrimination (using the free-the-slaves 14th Amendment, corporations have claimed discrimination to block local community efforts to pass "bad boy laws" or keep out predatory retailers).  The paradox, once again, is that the very same people who rail the loudest against “judicial activism” are those who support this expansion of corporatocracy in America.    

With this ruling, the Supreme Court ignored a hundred years of legal precedent – rather blatant hypocrisy from people like Justices Roberts and Alito who, during their confirmation hearings, each claimed to uphold the principle of stare decisis and Justice Scalia who claims to be a “strict constructionist” – and has turned over control of the government to a very wealthy minority. 

The fictional doctrine of “corporate personhood” is destroying our republic.  Individual citizen voters must now compete politically with corporations on an equal footing – even though a corporation has vastly more resources than any individual, can live forever, doesn't need to breathe clean air, doesn't fear going to jail, can change its citizenship in an hour, and can own others of its own kind.  Now the wealthy corporate owners effectively get two votes, one as an individual and one as their corporation.  Oh, but please understand:  this extra privilege does not apply to your small business (as a sole proprietorship) or your nonprofit community group. 

Senator John McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, said “I am disappointed by the decision of the Supreme Court and the lifting of the limits on corporate and union contributions.”  Senator Feingold said, “The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections.” 

This is a dangerous situation, indeed.  Columnist E J Dionne Jr wrote in the Washington Post, “The only proper response to this distortion of our political system by ideologically driven justices is a popular revolt.”  I agree.  This is a time for action!  Every American, Democrats and Republicans together, should be protesting in the streets.  And we should stay there until there is a constitutional amendment which expressly states:  “a corporation is not a person and does not have the same rights as a real, living, breathing human being.”  

President Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican turned Progressive) looked at a similar situation in April of 1906 and bluntly said, "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."  Thus began the reforms of the Square Deal and the New Deal.