I'd put it differently: An astonishing number of problems in politics could be solved by limiting the influence of big business.

The argument that campaign finance reform infringes on the free speech and other rights of corporations rests on the flawed assumption that fictitious entities like corporations have any rights like those of real human beings. Show me where the Constitution grants corporations any rights at all.

This notion of a corporation as equivalent to a person is a relatively new innovation, dating from the late 19th century. Once upon a time, corporations were kept on a very tight leash, their charters granted explicitly by states, chartered for a specific line of business, with specific capital limitations, and for a limited term. Our forebears were appropriately suspicious of the concentration of wealth and power, along with limitation of liability (reponsibility), inherent in the corporate form, and consciously set up the government to act as watchdog against the inevitable abuses. They used the bigness of government as a counterbalance to the bigness of business, to try and preserve the level playing field for Adam Smith's doughty individual entrepreneurs. We're dead meat when government and big business are on the same side.

Government regulation of big business is as American as apple pie, Tom...a tradition that we've recently seen validated in very dramatic ways. Ours is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people...not the corporations.

At least, that was the theory.

--Robert