An example that comes blindingly fast to my memory, is Elon Musk, that protector of any human right that happens to catch his fancy. There Is, of course, Free Speech, Guaranteed to Us by Our Constitution.
James Talarico, the Democratic nominee to a Texas Senate seat, is a case in point.
A recent article in the Washington Post, claims Musk’s total control of X (formerly Twitter) gives him outsize influence ahead of the looming mid-terms.
Outsize influence is what our Founders hoped (and expected) to avoid, when they guaranteed every man’s right to mount an orange-crate and address the locals. If no oranges were available in 1787 (the year of the US Constitutional Convention), an onion crate, or even a potato sack would do.
This is the pertinent thing about our honored Founders; one must recognize the times during which they were doing their fussing about with pouring the concrete that established America’s foundations.
In those hotly contested political times, local and regional newspapers, official government broadsides, political pamphlets, town meetings, and sermons were the available venues to broadcasting to whatever audience you could raise from a box to stand on. Unless, apparently, you were a preacher. Then you got a congregation, but they quickly tired of your unchanging rants.
But I say ‘hotly contested,’ because we were hip-deep in creating a nation. No less a voice than Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that, given the choice, he would prefer “newspapers without a government” rather than “a government without newspapers.”
We humans foresee the future only as far as our clouded spectacles can perceive.
250 years is a long way ahead of those times, to imagine such obstacles as the internet, social media, a nation of 243 million starkly divided political partisans, a crippling of our constitutionally guaranteed checks and balances, and a convicted criminal in the Oval Office.
Even an Oval Office was a long way off, government at the time being headquartered in Philadelphia.
Put yourself in those times, when a ride on horseback from Monticello to Philadelphia took about 7 days, fording multiple unbridged streams and navigating dirt roads that easily turned to deep mud depending on the weather.
But my argument is more about the megaphone than the box upon which one was encouraged to stand.
This essay may reach a couple of thousand recipients, if I am lucky. Musk’s ripping attacks upon Talarico will reach well past his X baseline of 14-15 million, as he frequently logs between 50 million and 175 million views per post.
Statistics from my potato sack, show that I, and Talarico, are being out-shouted at a conservative rate of seventy-five thousand to one. But then you know what they say about statistics, if you torture them sufficiently, they will confess to anything.
Talarico frequently shows up on my email, begging for contributions from we lesser mortals. Money is not his problem. Musk’s outsized megaphone against him is the problem that may sink his ship…and, statistically, all our ships.
A recent finding by The Supremes established this mismatch.
If you follow me at all, you will know that, for me, The Supremes are not a world famous Mo-Town singing group, but my chosen moniker for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010), ruled that corporate personhood entitles corporations to First Amendment free speech rights regarding independent political expenditures. Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately put up signs saying “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
What I didn’t know until recently, was thatthe court’s decision was based upon a precedent.
The doctrine of corporate personhood in the U.S. originated in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
In that case, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”
Precedent is a strong argument in Supreme Court decisions.
I think Citizens United was a case that all but threw republican democracy into the ditch, and stomped it to death. But, precedent won the day, and gave us the best government money can buy.
A decision which has everything to do with jurisprudence and damned little to do with megaphones.
What does ‘free speech’ mean any longer, if you, and I, and James Talarico, can be out-hollered, seventy-five thousand to one?
I know that’s not a hot-topic for you right now, with a mortgage payment due and a mid-term election coming up.
But, it should be.