Daniel Indiviglio writes that yesterday's Supreme Court decision "won't harm democracy and should actually help it." Matt Welch loves it. Megan is unfazed:
And respectfully, one does not need to be an idiot savant from Introductory Ec class to think that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech" means that, well, Congress shouldn't make any law abridging the freedom of speech, even if that speech is done by corporations. Nor is it crazy to think that as long as people have the right of exit, their decision not to exit legitimates the ability of organizations to speak for them.
I understand this point, just as I understand the resilience of the Second Amendment. But the theoretical defense leads, to my mind, to a practical nightmare, given the way our politics are now constructed in ways I don't believe the Founders would have intended.
That's why I haven't criticized the decision on constitutional grounds. I'm not enough of an expert on that. But the notion that there is no difference between an individual's inviolable right to speak or publish his or her own views and a corporation's right to flood the marketplace with advertizing to advance its own economic interests and to effectively buy off politicians' votes seems willfully perverse to me in the real world. I see the principle. But I'm pragmatic enough to believe this can be balanced by some good faith attempts to avoid the wholesale purchase of democratic speech by moneyed interests.
The Dish 