Don’t Worry. Despair.

Over at National Review, Victor Davis Hanson reads us a litany of national woes. He has chosen as a preface a too-familiar epigraph:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’
”“ W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming’

The article begins:

Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why.

Indeed they are, and indeed we do. (Why, you’d almost think Professor Hanson had been spending time in one of the Internet’s darker corners.)

Elsewhere, Heather Mac Donald comments on the sharp uptick in violent crimes in our nation’s urban centers, as a consequence of what has been called the “Ferguson Effect”:

Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts’ about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.

This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.’ Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,’ Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.

(In my grimmer moments, which are not infrequent, I’d have to wonder whether the “Ferguson Effect” is in fact an unintended consequence. To chalk it up to mere stupidity and unwisdom on the part of our elected officials would be the more charitable assumption, but the case for doing so is not persuasive.)

Recently I was invited to join a monthly discussion-group for the “Dissident Right”; it’s a convivial dinner-and-drinks affair at an “undisclosed location” in New York. The guest lecturer last month was a prominent conservative intellectual, and the author of several books. He gave a very engaging talk, but with a dispiriting message: there is simply no effective right-wing political opposition in America anymore, and no “critical mass” from which one can be expected to arise. Even as the ostensibly “conservative” GOP holds the upper hand in both houses of Congress, the nation moves faster and faster to the Left. And as others have pointed out: even if they wanted to, the Congress and the Judiciary simply cannot respond rapidly enough to the actions of an aggressive Executive — Congress because of the democratic limitations of a large legislative body, and the difficulty of assembling filibuster- and veto-proof majorities, while the Judiciary can initiate nothing at all on its own. Moreover, we are in such a late stage of this “progressive” disease that we are long past the point where a presidential victory, even by an actual conservative, can make any long-term difference to the morbid prognosis.

Furthermore, we are in the late stages of a kind of decline that is inherent in democracy itself, in which a gradual expansion of the franchise, culminating in universal suffrage, leads inexorably to short-sighted governance, the consumption of future assets for present-day luxuries, and the general dissipation of a nation’s vigor. As Fitzjames Stephen wrote in 1874:

The substance of what I have to say to the disadvantage of the theory and practice of universal suffrage is that it tends to invert what I should have regarded as the true and natural relation between wisdom and folly. I think that wise and good men ought to rule those who are foolish and bad. To say that the sole function of the wise and good is to preach to their neighbors, and that everyone indiscriminately should be left to do what he likes, should be provided with a ratable share of the sovereign power in the shape of the vote, and that the result of this will be the direction of power by wisdom, seems to me the wildest romance that ever got posession of any considerable number of minds.

So, here we are, in a runaway train, with a foolish and angry mob at the controls. We have not the numbers to storm the engine. What to do? Neither Hanson nor Mac Donald offer any prescription.

The historically literate reactionary’s answer is: nothing. We can do nothing, other than to hope we survive the inevitable wreck, to learn from our mistakes, and perhaps to carry something forward.

Writing at Outside In, Nick Land explains (my emphasis):

Neoreaction, as it tends to extremity on its Dark Enlightenment vector, frustrates all familiar demands for activism. Even if explicit anti-politics remains a minority posture, the long-dominant demotic calculus of political possibility is consistently subverted ”” coring out the demographic constituencies from which ”˜mobilization’ might be expected. There is no remotely coherent reactionary class, race, or creed … from which a tide-reversing mass politics could be constructed. In this respect, even the mildest versions of neoreactionary analysis are profoundly politically disillusioning.

Because of the reactionary’s emphasis on organic and traditional societies, the idea of any sort of reactionary activism based on revolutionary compulsion — an externally applied force that, history shows, generally assumes the form of terrorism — is a self-abnegating absurdity. Therefore, Mr. Land argues:

Demotist activism finds its rigorous neoreactionary ”˜counterpart’ in fatalism … Rather than attempting to make something happen, fatality restores something that cannot be stopped.

There’s a word for what Mr. Land prescribes: horrorism.

It is thus that the approximate contours of the horrorist task emerge into focus. Rather than resisting the desperation of the progressive ideal by terrorizing its enemies, it directs itself to the culmination of progressive despair… It de-mobilizes, de-massifies, and de-democratizes, through subtle, singular, catalytic interventions, oriented to the realization of fate. The Cathedral has to be horrified into paralysis. The horrorist message (to its enemies): Nothing that you are doing can possibly work.

“What is to be done?’ is not a neutral question. The agent it invokes already strains towards progress. This suffices to suggest a horrorist response: Nothing. Do nothing. Your progressive ”˜praxis’ will come to nought in any case. Despair. Subside into horror. You can pretend to prevail in antagonism against ”˜us’, but reality is your true ”” and fatal ”” enemy. We have no interest in shouting at you. We whisper, gently, in your ear: “despair’. (The horror.)

That’s enough for now, I think. Enjoy your weekend.

32 Comments

  1. haploid says

    Aargh. Don’t go into Land’s corner. Dude is a slick post-modernist but cripes, what spirit defiling nonsense. Accelerationism thru word-salad? Anyone who lived through the 90’s should recoil, as from a nostalgia of poison.

    Posted May 30, 2015 at 11:38 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    Land’s writing is far from pithy, and my views are not congruent with his, but I think his gloomy assessment here is correct. In recent years (and I’ve lived not only “through the 90’s”, but also through the 80’s, the 70’s, the 60’s, and a fair-sized swath of the 50’s), I’ve been driven to the conclusion that there’s no longer any hope of averting this disaster by any sort of political reversal — and that if that’s the case, it’s probably better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

    Posted May 30, 2015 at 11:58 pm | Permalink
  3. “Enjoy your weekend”

    I thought, Malcolm, that irony was a British habit!

    A few days ago James Longstreet wrote a similarly ominous blog post at The American Thinker. I was hugely struck by the imagery of his title “Like cattle before a thunderstorm”. It captures exactly a great herd apparently grazing placidly but just beginning to show signs of uneasiness.

    He ends his post with these words: “There is good cause for the cattle to be nervous. The ground is moving, and it is already raining.”

    I really do fear for America.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/05/like_cattle_before_a_thunderstorm.html

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 6:19 am | Permalink
  4. Whitewall says

    ..” he said that the battle for the American culture and political system was effectively over, and that the Left had won.” We have the social and cultural evidence to prove it. But, the Left “winning” is kind of like the flies winning the fly paper. The Left lives to destroy. If those of us who are traditional in belief will yield them the swamp, the Left will begin to inherit it too. Swamps are unforgiving. In time, when the Left has sunk to about waist deep, we traditional types should be like wise.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 7:06 am | Permalink
  5. Whitney says

    Don’t despair. Pray.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 7:28 am | Permalink
  6. Malcolm,

    Maybe you could elicit a response from your favorite gadfly. It won’t dampen the doom and gloom, but it might provide a few gallows guffaws. Can’t do any harm of “weight”, I would think (though your mileage may vary).

    Y’all have a nice day.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
  7. the one eyed man says

    In answer to your question from last week: “Can you really believe that the direction of social movement over the past half-century hasn’t been relentlessly, and monotonically, to the Left?”

    To be sure, some things have moved to the Left. Women now have career choices beyond school teacher and librarian. Blacks have had full voting rights for fifty years and have had equal access to schools and lunch counters for fifty one years. Polluters no longer have the unfettered right to spew effluvia into the environment. Seniors no longer go bankrupt from medical bills because of Medicare. These advances were all fought bitterly by conservatives, and liberals triumphed.

    However, at least since Reagan, we have moved profoundly to the right in many respects.

    It is much harder to get an abortion in many states than it was when Reagan was President. We have had massive redistribution of national wealth from the lower and middle class to the top socioeconomic stratum. There is less social mobility from the bottom quintile to the upper four quintiles. Welfare programs for non-working, healthy males have been mostly (or completely) scrapped. Unions have been stripped of leverage by right-to-work laws. The government no longer sets prices for phone service, airline tickets, and other necessities, following the deregulation of many industries. Marginal tax rates have decreased. Corporations and wealthy political donors can now contribute infinite sums of money to political campaigns. Corporations now have the same religious rights as individuals, and can evade generally applicable laws under the claim of religious freedom (although I will believe in the sincerity of their purported belief in religious freedom when they also believe that Muslims should also have the religious freedom to set up a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center). We have twice witnessed conservatives shutting down the government to extract unilateral concessions from the governing party. You can openly carry a gun in many more places than ever before. Even music is more conservative: Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift are like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir compared to the stuff we listened to. These are all examples of conservative agenda prevailing and changing the arc of American society.

    It is a tug-of-war with no decisive victors. I can understand, along with Hofstadter, why ideologues will use hyperbole to paint the other side as omnipotent, in order to gin up the base. However I don’t think that we are much further to either the right or the left than we were a few decades ago.

    You cite marriage equality as evidence of a shift to the left. Sometimes social change occurs at a breathtaking pace, and this certainly applies here. However you posit this change to the dark forces of the Left inculcating their heretical beliefs into the minds of right thinking, freedom loving Americans. Have you ever considered that maybe people suddenly realized that it doesn’t make much sense for the government — or anyone else — to tell people they can’t marry their same-sex partner? Or that sometimes there is a collective epiphany, which comes not because perfidious ideologues seek hegemony, but because people start to see some things in a different light?

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 2:19 pm | Permalink
  8. JK says

    We have had massive redistribution of national wealth from the lower and middle class to the top socioeconomic stratum.

    Yep. So much so, back in 2000 a pair of “dead broke” parents went from stealing White House furniture to making $60,000 per minute just talking.

    Or that sometimes there is a collective epiphany, which comes not because perfidious ideologues seek hegemony, but because people start to see some things in a different light?

    As the land of the Irish Republican Army would tend, to confirm.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 4:04 pm | Permalink
  9. “What raised the English-speaking peoples to greatness was not a magical property in their DNA, nor a special richness in their earth, nor yet an advantage in military technology, but their political and legal institutions.

    The happiness of the human race depends, more than anyone likes to admit, on the survival and success of those institutions. As a devolved network of allied nations, the Anglosphere might yet exert its benign pull on the rest of this century. Without that pull, the future looks altogether grayer and colder.”

    From: Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World [Kindle Edition] by Daniel Hannan (Author)

    I recommend this book highly.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
  10. JK says

    Breaking News.

    Patriot Act provisions end.

    Obama signs new Executive order.

    McConnell and Boehner agree to new Obamacare provisions.

    Rand Paul indicted under the Alien and Sedition Act.

    Gag Order Imposed.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 10:00 pm | Permalink
  11. Malcolm says

    Peter,

    Obviously we see these things rather differently. For starters, I’m not going to let you get away with that “massive redistribution of wealth” remark: in discussing political systems, “wealth redistribution” refers to the taking by the government of private wealth for public distribution. Historical variation in the inequality of wealth is not what the term refers to. And you know it. (When you say things like this, you’re just trolling. And you know that, too.)

    There are small ways in which we have moved to the right, most of which are a dwindling residuum of a pre-existing Constitutional order. But zoom out a little, and these are easily seen to be small, and mostly local, rollbacks of the eternal leftward trend. That the Left, to pick one example, has suffered some setbacks in its relentless assault on gun rights in recent years, and in a few states, overlooks the enormous shift toward gun control at larger time-scales; in an earlier era there were no restrictions whatsoever on gun ownership in America. Meanwhile, you can be sure that the Left will not rest where this issue is concerned; most recently, the Obama administration sought to ban the ammunition used by millions of law-abiding Americans in the most popular rifle ever made.

    As for welfare rules, Barack Obama unilaterally rolled back work requirements enacted during the Clinton administration.

    Your remark about income mobility is simply false, as even NPR acknowledges. (Nor is it clear why this should be seen as a left-right issue.)

    As with gun rights, the Citizens United decision was not a movement to the right, but simply a rebuff of an attempted imposition of government restrictions of liberty by the Left. It was just another lingering vestige of rapidly eroding Constitutional limitations of government power.

    As for government shutdowns, we could argue about which side did the shutting down — but regardless of that, for Congress to use, as the Framers intended, its “power of the purse” in a (failed) attempt to oppose enormous and audacious left-wing initiatives — Obamacare and executive amnesty — is hardly a right-wing victory. (As I noted in this post, Congress is already at a tactical disadvantage against an aggressive Executive, so why shouldn’t a Congress controlled by an ‘opposition’ party use the only powers it has at its disposal?)

    Popular culture: once upon a time eros in American culture was Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing in evening clothes. Now it’s Miley Cyrus masturbating in her underwear. (I would print some present-day rap lyrics here, but my sense of decorum prevents me from publishing such vile obscenities.)

    Regarding homosexual marriage, if the shift had taken place by way of normal democratic processes such as state legislation and referenda, you might have a point. But what has happened is that the will of the people of the various states has been overridden by the Federal leviathan, again and again — as it has for so many other left-wing causes. And what is being imposed by the crushing power of government is not mere toleration of such marriages, but also coerced participation in what millions of people, in agreement with the traditions of every society that has ever existed, consider a grotesque and unnatural perversion of civilization’s most important sacrament.

    One also cannot appreciate the success of the Left’s “long march” through our institutions without looking at the ideological conquest and relentless enstupidation of “higher” education, which, save for pockets of resistance in the mathematical and technical sciences, has become little more than a cultural-Marxist indoctrination program. (Here, for example, are the recent winners of a national college-level debating championship.) And standards have not only collapsed in academia: as I’ve noted often here, standards in essential services such as the police, fire-departments, and the military have also been battered down by the Left’s infinite campaign for “social justice”, which has for a very long time assumed the role, and all the trappings, of a secular religion.

    But the real story is in the ceaseless centralization of power in Washington, loosening of Constitutional limitations on government power, expansion of the welfare state, the size of government, and the national debt, displacement and marginalization of the traditional American population and its heritage by mass third-world immigration, destruction of social cohesion by aggressive multiculturalism, explosion in the number of Federal regulations, and ever-increasing intrusion of the government into every aspect of our social, religious, and economic life. By any of these measures the Left has achieved, over the past century or so, a tremendous series of victories — and in doing so, has inflicted terrible damage to the nation’s prospects for long-term survival.

    Posted May 31, 2015 at 10:17 pm | Permalink
  12. Whitewall says

    Henry, I also enjoy reading Daniel Hannan. He is one of the best British writers of all things American and “Anglospheric” that I know of.

    Posted June 1, 2015 at 7:14 am | Permalink
  13. Epicaric says

    Localized (state) victories for the “Right,” in areas such as abortion restriction and gun rights, need to be seen in their context: as regulating tacks rightward in the final service of a definitive leftward course. These are reactionary measures that ultimately illustrate an underlying leftward victory. Restrictions on abortion do not undermine the now recognized legal right, but rather delineate the boundary in the form of a truce. Late term abortions may be restricted, or mandatory waiting periods, or other restrictions my be imposed on the margin, but the core right remains untouched. Paradoxically, for such a polarizing issue, adoration is
    ultimately a poor measure of conservative values outside of the contemporary construct of social conservatism. Second amendment rights are a far purer bellwether of the fairing of core conservative principles. Victories for gun rights would seem to illustrate conservatives to be at a last stand, forced into a political cul-de-sac. For many conservatives, gun rights are indeed their last stand. The political capital expended on this issue paints a picture of quasi-desperation: that if all else fails we shall retreat to our fortress. It is an important issue in its own right, and an issue of indisputable core principle, but in its success one can sense an underlying pessimism that lends this victory greater significance. In the end, though, the Left, now prisoners of inchoate multiculturalism and open borders fever, will ultimately give rise to a society more similar to the Ottoman millett system than the cinematic utopia that they believe to be constructing. Shamed by their economic illiteracy, the Left has forsaken its core principles and has become an unwitting supporter of the current economic status quo. The Right has meanwhile been browbeaten into silence on all affairs social.

    Posted June 1, 2015 at 9:11 am | Permalink
  14. JK says

    One also cannot appreciate the success of the Left’s “long march” through our institutions without looking at the ideological conquest and relentless enstupidation of “higher” education …

    A new one for me (silly me) last week dawned in the, as it happens, electoral process down in, of all places Texas.

    Curious, I turned to Wiki ’cause I honestly didn’t know:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality

    Satisfying my curiosity on that, I got another surprise. I’d heard of new all purpose “____________ Studies” but I didn’t know there was actually [same link] “Queer Studies.”

    _________

    But the real story is in the ceaseless centralization of power in Washington …

    And to get the full grip on that, look at the full text of the clause where “enumerated powers” is mentioned.

    Posted June 1, 2015 at 10:40 am | Permalink
  15. JK says

    “Texas ?!!!” I hear y’all muttering, “JK’s off his rocker again.”

    Meet Mary Gonzales;

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/29/mary-gonzalez-pansexual_n_7433432.html

    Posted June 1, 2015 at 10:47 am | Permalink
  16. Robert,

    Paul Johnson is another good British historian. His “A History of the Jews” is a terrific read, especially given that he himself is a gentile.

    Posted June 1, 2015 at 3:04 pm | Permalink
  17. The Anti-Gnostic says

    Malcolm – the following is from a commenter at my blog. I assume your friend attended a talk by Newt Gingrich. Perhaps your friend could let us know the answers to some questions:

    “What else did he say? That the culture war is over, the left won but ‘we’ can still fight for [Republican proposal of the week] or did he say that the culture war is over, the left won and it’s time to withdraw from electoral politics in favor of other action?”

    The answers are important, because:

    “The first one (which is almost certainly how he finished the talk) means that Newt was never opposed to the left’s cultural program. How could he be? To oppose the left’s cultural program involves knowing why it’s a bad idea other than an instinctive revulsion – it requires knowledge of how evolution shaped men and women and different races. All of that is forbidden knowledge. To even know that stuff means you can never be a national politician because your instinctive reactions will be wrong and you will slip up – and any slip ups that show you have those forbidden thoughts are immediately national news. Newt rose to power and so has to be conscious that his role is the fake opposition. Now that’s the kind of thing that you can hide and even if you do slip up it’ll never be news.

    When someone who leads the fake opposition says the other side has won in a particular area the act is ‘oh well, let’s fight where we can and not give up on the system.’ It’s actually a tactic to reduce opposition.

    If he said the second, well then, that’s a whole different story. That’s the reactionary message.

    My money is on the first interpretation being true.”

    Posted June 2, 2015 at 12:31 pm | Permalink
  18. Malcolm says

    Hi AG,

    Yes, that’s a good question. Like you, I expect that the first interpretation is the correct one.

    I’ll ask my friend next chance I get.

    Posted June 2, 2015 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
  19. Malcolm says

    AG, after further digging I have learned that the remarks I referred to were made in a different context than my friend had reported; the speaker had been talking about foreign policy, in particular the ongoing negotiations with Iran and America’s posture toward Israel. I should have vetted the reference, rather than including it as hearsay. I have edited the post accordingly.

    Posted June 2, 2015 at 9:16 pm | Permalink
  20. The Anti-Gnostic says

    Malcolm, I see no reason your post is not generally correct. Unfortunately too, I think my commenter is correct. The speaker (guessing this was Newt Gingrich) is rallying the troops in one, tiny area where the GOP has not been completely routed in order to keep his sinecure intact. Republicans are false opposition regardless of their actual intent.

    Posted June 2, 2015 at 10:50 pm | Permalink
  21. Corvinus says

    “As with gun rights, the Citizens United decision was not a movement to the right, but simply a rebuff of an attempted imposition of government restrictions of liberty by the Left. It was just another lingering vestige of rapidly eroding Constitutional limitations of government power.”

    Patently false. Citizens United was conservative judicial activism. The Founding Fathers clearly understood the power that corporations possessed, as evident by the shenanigans of the East India Trading Company. Trade-dominance by that corporation aroused the gravest of concerns by the Founding Fathers, and as a result, the framers took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare by the government, that their rights would be conferred through charters and acts of Congress.

    Note that the founding fathers intended political free speech for natural persons. John Adams, speaking for his brethren, stated “Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.” So, you honestly believe the Founding Fathers would disregard their own position by implying that corporations equate to real people? NO! Rights were designed and conferred to American citizens, real people.

    Fast forward to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), which in part served as foundational piece for Citizens United. In Santa Clara, the Supreme Court determined that public corporations, like private citizens, have due process and equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment.

    Now preceding every Supreme Court case entry is a headnote, or summary. The court reporter, J.C. Bancroft Davis, a former railroad executive, stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids the State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”

    The question of whether corporations were persons within the context of the 14th Amendment, however, was NOT explicitly decided. The Supreme Court NEVER ruled whether corporations were “citizens” and afforded certain inalienable rights. Since 1886, the Supreme Court has reiterated this assumption that corporations are entitled to constitutional protections…when it CLEARLY was not the case!

    Posted June 2, 2015 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
  22. Dave says

    History records only two prior collapses of this magnitude: The Fall of Rome in 410 AD and the Bronze Age Collapse of 1200 BC. Has anyone else noticed that if collapses happen at 1600-year intervals, we’re due for another one right about now?

    My advice is: Don’t live in a city or a desert, and learn which weeds are edible. Land + water = food.

    Posted June 3, 2015 at 11:09 am | Permalink
  23. Malcolm says

    Corvinus,

    What is “patently false” is the curiously persistent idea that the Citizens United ruling is about the definition of a “person”. It is, rather, focused solely on limiting the power of government to impose prior and arbitrary restrictions on speech — particularly political speech, which is arguably the form of speech that, in a free society, is the most in need of protection from government intrusion.

    From the majority opinion:

    Speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content.

    Quite apart from the purpose or effect of regulating content, moreover, the Government may commit a constitutional wrong when by law it identifies certain preferred speakers. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

    Note the phrase “person or class”. The intent of the Court in this ruling is not to define corporations as persons; it is that freedom of speech is so important that it should be protected from government censorship regardless of whether its source is an individual person or an association of persons.

    As for the Framers’ concern for the power of banks, this ruling has no bearing on the commercial and economic activities of corporations, which are obviously subject to innumerable government regulations of uncontroversial constitutionality. Its purpose is only to defend the bedrock constitutional principle that free expression, and in particular political expression, is of such paramount importance to political liberty, that it is better always to err on the side of too much protection than too little.

    Posted June 3, 2015 at 11:26 am | Permalink
  24. “…, and learn which weeds are edible.”

    I’d rather eat cake (preferably sugar-free).

    Posted June 3, 2015 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
  25. Corvinus says

    “What is “patently false” is the curiously persistent idea that the Citizens United ruling is about the definition of a “person”. It is, rather, focused solely on limiting the power of government to impose prior and arbitrary restrictions on speech.”

    The ruling is explicitly tied to the concept of person.

    Congress distinctly defined speech as being political or economic. In general, corporations may invoke rights that individuals possess, such as the right to petition, to speech, to enter into contracts and to hold property, to sue and to be sued, only relating to ECONOMIC/COMMERCIAL matters.

    When it came to corporations in POLITICAL matters like hosting rallies and campaign contributions, Congress and state governments had enacted several laws banning company involvement in the political arena, citing past corruptive practices.

    Supreme Court decisions regarding corporate personhood had focused on businesses being held liable for their production of goods and being able to “voice” their concerns in a court of law when they felt government attempted to strictly regulate their practices.

    When it came to influencing government policies through political speech, the Supreme Court, Congress, and state legislatures made it a general policy for decades those rights squarely belonged to living things, not artificially created entities. Decisions in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, however, slowly eroded that distinction and paved the way for Citizens United to become the law of the land.

    Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a conservative, mentioned the dubious headnote in the Santa Clara case when he wrote a compelling dissent in a 1978 Supreme Court case that expanded corporate personhood.

    Rehnquist reiterated Chief Justice John Marshall’s views in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) a corporation was an ARTIFICIAL BEING possessing the properties which the charter of creation confers upon it–meaning a government granted a business with the ECONOMIC right–not POLITICAL rights–to operate within its borders. Moreover, Rehnquist warned treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech was to “confuse metaphor with reality”.

    So how should the Supreme Court treat newspapers, magazines, and television networks which report the news? The Court in media cases has tailored its rulings under the “Freedom Of The Press” clause and in citizen cases has tailored its rulings under the “Freedom Of Speech” clause. That is, it renders an opinion based on previous cases and past precedents in the appropriate area.

    Twenty-two cases since 1936 have rendered decisions in that for-profit corporations DO NOT enjoy the same First Amendment rights as individuals; rather they extended only to those INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK FOR COMPANIES that are vehicles for producing and distributing free speech, such as books, newspapers, journals, films and other artistic and educational entities. That is, writers–actual people–who WORK for a media company are subject to the freedom of the press provision of the First Amendment.

    We know that exceptions exist to free speech (e.g. sedition, slander) for both media companies and citizens. Media companies, however, are unique in its role regarding free speech compared to other businesses. If a reporter engaged in slander, they would be sued under their occupation as a writer employed by their company. If a business owner engaged in slander, they would be sued as a private citizen. In either situation, the courts would determine whether or not the accusation had merit and make a decision in that specific context.

    In Citizens United, three issues were addressed: 1) is a company, as an “artificial entity” (that is, deriving its legitimacy by a legislature) whose function is ECONOMIC in nature, entitled to the POLITICAL rights as “natural persons” (that is, citizens of a nation as specified by the criteria of a legislature) under the Constitution; 2) is “free speech” simply “free speech” or is it delineated as “political free speech” and “economic/commercial free speech”
    -and- 3) does “free speech” protections for companies override the historical impact of corporate monied interests in politics.

    The decision centered on the POLITICAL content of their good (i.e. film) in relation to the McCain-Feingold Act, not the ECONOMIC right of Citizens United (a non-profit corporation) to produce a good.

    Critics of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who helped to craft the majority opinion, emphatically stated during his confirmation that the Court should refrain from overturning precedent. He presented himself as an incrementalist, a justice opposed to big changes in direction. One can argue whether Roberts has actually lived up to his judicial-restraint packaging. A New York Times editorial urging a narrow ruling, an op-ed by Jeffrey Rosen, opined that how Roberts handled this case would determine if he was the next Earl Warren, the 1950’s/1960’s liberal Chief Justice whom some conservatives demonize for “legislating from the bench” and “judicial overreach”.

    Overturning a century of precedent, however, may not be contrary to his self-declared judicial philosophy. “Originalism”–justices who claim it is
    not Supreme Court precedent that governs, but rather the intentions and understanding of those who drafted the Constitution (and its amendments)–lends itself to the possibility that the precedent was inherently flawed and therefore required judicial intervention.

    Posted June 3, 2015 at 5:59 pm | Permalink
  26. Malcolm says

    Corvinus,

    Despite your persistence upon this point, I continue to disagree. The decision in Citizens United reflects the view that the Constitution exists not to make positive grants of rights to the people — whereby it becomes necessary to parse, in confoundingly difficult detail, the criteria for appropriately qualified personhood for each and every right to be granted — but rather to set necessary limits upon the power and scope of the State. (I remind our readers that this was why there was such heated debate about creating the Bill of Rights in the first place, because to enumerate specific limitations upon the government in this way might be wrongly construed as a list of specific grants of individual rights, and might form a legal basis for subsequent erosion of limitations not specifically identified. As we have seen, this concern was sell-founded; particularly also as regards the Second Amendment.)

    As you suggested in the last paragraph of your second comment:

    “Originalism”—justices who claim it is not Supreme Court precedent that governs, but rather the intentions and understanding of those who drafted the Constitution (and its amendments)—lends itself to the possibility that the precedent was inherently flawed and therefore required judicial intervention.

    I would substitute “remedy” for “intervention”, but it is clear in this decision that the majority opinion regarded the duty of the Court, first and foremost, to safeguard the bedrock principle of freedom of speech. I imagine the Framers would have approved.

    The inverse of this view is to assume the legitimacy of government censorship in all but specifically granted exceptions, as it appears you would prefer. You would grant freedom of speech only to “natural persons” and associations of such persons that take the form of media corporations (the “press”), while denying it to all others. The majority opinion addresses this directly, as we can see in these excerpts:

    The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Laws enacted to control or suppress speech may operate at different points in the speech process. The following are just a few examples of restrictions that have been attempted at different stages of the speech process–all laws found to be invalid: restrictions requiring a permit at the outset, Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of N. Y., Inc. v. Village of Stratton, 536 U. S. 150, 153 (2002); imposing aburden by impounding proceeds on receipts or royalties, Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U. S. 105, 108, 123 (1991); seeking toexact a cost after the speech occurs, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S., at 267; and subjecting the speaker to criminal penalties, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 445 (1969) (per curiam).

    The law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations–including nonprofit advocacy corporations–either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Thus, the following acts would all be felonies under §441b: The Sierra Club runs an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests; the National Rifle Association publishes a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U. S. Senator supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate’s defense of free speech. These prohibitions are classic examples of censorship.

    …Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. See Buckley, supra, at 14—15 (“In a republic where the people are sovereign, the ability of the citizenry to make informed choices among candidates for office is essential”). The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. The First Amendment “‘has its fullest and most urgent application’ to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.” Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 223 (1989) (quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U. S. 265, 272 (1971)); see Buckley, supra, at 14 (“Discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution”). For these reasons, political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence.

    …Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints. See, e.g., United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 813 (2000) (striking down content-based restriction). Prohibited, too, are restrictions distinguishing among different speakers, allowing speech by some but not others. See First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 784 (1978). As instruments to censor, these categories are interrelated: Speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content.

    Quite apart from the purpose or effect of regulating content, moreover, the Government may commit a constitutional wrong when by law it identifies certain preferred speakers. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration.The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each. …[I]t is inherent in the nature of the political process that voters must be free to obtain information from diverse sources in order to determine how to cast their votes. At least before Austin, the Court had not allowed the exclusion of a class of speakers from the general public dialogue. We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers. Both history and logic lead us to this conclusion.

    …Austin’s antidistortion rationale would produce the dangerous, and unacceptable, consequence that Congress could ban political speech of media corporations. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 283 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (“The chilling endpoint of the Court’s reasoning is not difficult to foresee: outright regulation of the press”). Cf. Tornillo, 418 U. S., at 250 (alleging the existence of “vast accumulations of unreviewable power in the modern media empires”). Media corporations are now exempt from §441b’s ban on corporate expenditures. See 2 U. S. C. §§431(9)(B)(i), 434(f)(3)(B)(i). Yet media corporations accumulate wealth with the help of the corporate form, the largest media corporations have “immense aggregations of wealth,” and the views expressed by media corporations often “have little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views. Austin, 494 U. S., at 660. Thus, under the Government’s reasoning, wealthy media corporations could have their voices diminished to put them on par with other media entities. There is no precedent for permitting this under the First Amendment. The media exemption discloses further difficulties with the law now under consideration. There is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be exempt as media corporations and those which are not. “We have consistently rejected the proposition that the institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond that of other speakers.” Id., at 691 (SCALIA, J., dissenting) (citing Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 782); see Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U. S. 749, 784 (1985) (Brennan, J., joined by Marshall, Blackmun, and STEVENS, JJ., dissenting); id., at 773 (White, J., concurring in judgment). With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media, moreover, the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.

    The law’s exception for media corporations is, on its own terms, all but an admission of the invalidity of the antidistortion rationale. And the exemption results in a further, separate reason for finding this law invalid: Again by its own terms, the law exempts some corporations but covers others, even though both have the need or the motive to communicate their views. The exemption applies to media corporations owned or controlled by corporations that have diverse and substantial investments and participate in endeavors other than news. So even assuming the most doubtful proposition that a news organization has a right to speak when others do not, the exemption would allow a conglomerate that owns both a media business and an unrelated business to influence or control the media in order to advance its overall business interest. At the same time, some other corporation, with an identical business interest but no media outlet in its ownership structure, would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue. This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment.

    …At the founding, speech was open, comprehensive, and vital to society’s definition of itself; there were no limits on the sources of speech and knowledge… The Framers may
    have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment protection than those types of speakers and media that provided the means of communicating political ideas when the Bill of Rights was adopted.

    …The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach. The Government has “muffle[d] the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy.” McConnell, supra, at 257—258 (opinion of SCALIA, J.). And “the electorate [has been] deprived of information, knowledge and opinion vital to its function.” CIO, 335 U. S., at 144 (Rutledge, J., concurring in result). By suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the Government prevents their voices and viewpoints from reaching the public and advising voters on which persons or entities are hostile to their interests. Factions will necessarily form in our Republic, but the remedy of “destroying the liberty” of some factions is “worse than the disease.” The Federalist No. 10, p. 130 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (J. Madison). Factions should be checked by permitting them all to speak, see ibid., and by entrusting the people to judge what is true and what is false.

    Finally, this:

    Even if §441b’s expenditure ban were constitutional, wealthy corporations could still lobby elected officials, although smaller corporations may not have the resources to do so. And wealthy individuals and unincorporated associations can spend unlimited amounts on independent expenditures. See, e.g., WRTL, 551 U. S., at 503—504 (opinion of SCALIA, J.) (“In the 2004 election cycle, a mere
    24 individuals contributed an astounding total of $142 million to [26 U. S. C. §527 organizations]”). Yet certain disfavored associations of citizens–those that have taken on the corporate form–are penalized for engaging in the same political speech.

    When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

    I find these arguments persuasive and just. They agree and resonate with my own understanding of the Constitution, the importance of free speech, and the intent of the Framers. Of course, there have been contrary opinions at every point in this decades-long process, and clearly you have found them more persuasive than I, or the Justices who joined this majority, do. My own opinion, as I have already made clear, is that it is critically important to understand the Constitution not to grant rights, but rather to limit the role and powers of the State — and that we should err always on the side of liberty in matters of speech.

    So, in my opinion: Citizens United was not a new beachhead for the Right, but a rare slippage of the century-old Leftward ratchet. I doubt, though, that I’ve persuaded you of this. You are welcome to fire off another salvo, but I don’t think I will have much more to say about this here.

    Posted June 5, 2015 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
  27. Corvinus says

    Sir, I previously read the opinion. The devil is in the undisclosed details. The Supreme Court interjected itself into election financing by overturning a century of long-standing congressional and state law.

    “You would grant freedom of speech only to “natural persons” and associations of such persons that take the form of media corporations (the “press”), while denying it to all others.”

    The founding fathers made explicit this “denial” of POLITICAL free speech, not ECONOMIC free speech.

    “whereby it becomes necessary to parse, in confoundingly difficult detail, the criteria for appropriately qualified personhood for each and every right to be granted…””¨

    It’s actually surprisngly easy, sir. Corporations are not people entitled to political free speech. Congress and state legislatures passed laws in the 1900’s specifying that corporations did not have political rights and banned corporate campaign contributions. Forty years later, Congress extended the ban to union contributions and to spending by both corporations and unions. Regarding case law, state courts since the 1900’s upheld state laws regarding corporations and political rights, in some instances creating precedent (new interpretations of the law) based on the facts and nature of the case. So there had been settled law for decades regarding state and Congressional regulation or prevention of corporate contributions in elections. The Supreme Court had honored those state laws and state court decisions, i.e. observing a century of precedent, until the 1970’s, when it invalidated them through conservative judicial activism in the Bellotti case (1978).

    In Bellotti, several companies challenged a Massachusetts law barring corporate expenditures to influence citizen-led initiatives, taking heed to the Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that equated spending money in elections with speech. The high court of Massachusetts rejected the legal challenge, stating companies do NOT have the right to political free speech as natural persons. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling, struck down the Massachusetts statue, which had been strengthened by past state court decisions.

    To his credit, conservative jurist Justice William Rehnquist vehemently opposed–“A State grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as an economic entity. It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere.” The Supreme Court in two cases, Austin and McConnell, found constitutional legislative limits on corporate expenditures in elections…until Citizens United.

    Strict construction mandates that a judge apply the Constitution only as it written; no further investigation is warranted, no inferences are to be made. In other words, strict construction is a philosophy in which judges base their decisions on a word for word interpretation of what the Constitution actually states, or at least based on the intent of the framers of the Constitution (or its amendments).

    So, I am sure you will be able to show clearly where it states in the Constitution that corporations are indeed natural persons, or citizens if you prefer, entitled to political rights and that the framers supported companies having the said political rights as people. I await your research on this matter, sir.

    Posted June 6, 2015 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
  28. Malcolm says

    Corvinus,

    This was interesting for a while, but we are just talking past each other now. You seem resolutely committed to the idea that the constitutional issue here is which classes of speakers qualify to be granted, by the generosity of the State, the right to speech — and by extension, what speech the State shall deign to allow the people to hear.

    You wrote (my emphasis):

    So, I am sure you will be able to show clearly where it states in the Constitution that corporations are indeed natural persons, or citizens if you prefer, entitled to political rights and that the framers supported companies having the said political rights as people. I await your research on this matter, sir.

    My answer, as should be obvious to all by now, is that nowhere in the Constitution does it state that corporations are indeed natural persons, “entitled” to political rights. This is, and I am repeating myself now, because the Constitution does not exist to grant political rights, but to limit the power of the State. And there is no limitation of the power of the State more important than to limit its frightening power to censor political speech (with the possible exception of its power to disarm the people).

    As for “strict construction”, what the Constitution does say, and very clearly too, is that free speech is so important that Congress shall pass no law restricting it. It says nothing about whether the speaker is a person, an association of persons, a burning bush, or an intelligent gas from Pluto.

    The decades of legislation and jurisprudence that you refer to as somehow being dispositive in this argument had therefore been built upon a grotesque inversion of the purpose and proper object of the Constitution. The Citizens United decision was a long-overdue correction.

    I believe it is abundantly clear to all, at this point, that we see all of this very differently, and that neither I, nor the wise opinion of the Citizens United majority, will persuade you to reconsider your position. I’ve learned that there is often a point at which political arguments become futile, and I believe we have reached it.

    Good day to you, sir.

    Posted June 6, 2015 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
  29. Warrior_Savant says

    The only way to win, is to refuse to play the game.

    The Left lives to destroy, the Right (used to) live to preserve, to cultivate, to foster….growth.

    The Left has persuaded or beaten down what has remained of the Right into submission. Now they both seek to destroy, provided of course that the controllers of both the Left and the Right profit immensely.

    The only way to win this game against them, is to refuse to play.

    1. Don’t vote (futile exercise by now, agreed?)
    2. Remove yourself from high density populations (your big cities)
    3. Unplug from social media and all “smart devices” (the iPhone or laptop is ok for email/text/phone communication and internet research. FB, instagram, etc is not)
    4. Learn to clothe, feed and defend yourself, your family and your likeminded community
    5. STOP paying taxes. (this is the linchpin that holds it all together for the powers that be. If you do all of the above but still feed the beast, it will still have a beating heart and will still seek to devour you. STARVE IT TO DEATH.)

    Once we remove our collective chess pieces from the table, there is no more game left to be played. We have a choice in this matter. Despair like frightened cattle in the stormy stockyard? Or refuse to let our degenerate culture sweep us away in the coming flood? When it all comes down, I know what I’m doing. Exactly what I’m preparing myself for and when the day i hope never comes does arrive, I hope I see you all there ready and able to walk away from it too.

    {^Don’t pay taxes he says!! “Yeah right, but what if I go to jail? ( every single person mutters under his breath).”
    You’re right. What if the unlucky one is YOU? That’s precisely how the game is played. Fear, that your # will be the # called. So we all keep playing along, like good little boys and girls. BUT, if that fear were gone and every person said no….the game is effectively over –> Because this machine won’t go to work for free.}

    That is our only way out now.

    Posted June 7, 2015 at 1:32 am | Permalink
  30. “That is our only way out now.”

    That is not even wrong. Because apathy.

    Posted June 7, 2015 at 1:21 pm | Permalink
  31. Corvinus says

    “You seem resolutely committed to the idea that the constitutional issue here is which classes of speakers qualify to be granted, by the generosity of the State, the right to speech – and by extension, what speech the State shall deign to allow the people to hear.”

    Sir, the issue here is definitional. Corporations are NOT people; they are artificial entities. The Constitution was specifically intended for natural born individuals, i.e. citizens of a country. Furthermore, companies DO have the right to speech–economic speech. There is no “generosity” of the State, for the State does not exist without the people who reside in that State and who of their own free will make laws for the benefit of society.

    “My answer, as should be obvious to all by now, is that nowhere in the Constitution does it state that corporations are indeed natural persons, “entitled” to political rights.”

    Exactly the intention of the Framers.

    “This is, and I am repeating myself now, because the Constitution does not exist to grant political rights, but to limit the power of the State.”

    Corrected for accuracy–> This is, and I am repeating myself now, because the Constitution does not exist to grant political rights, but to limit the power of the State, individuals, and associations.

    “And there is no limitation of the power of the State more important than to limit its frightening power to censor political speech (with the possible exception of its power to disarm the people).”

    ҬPolitical speech is meant clearly for living beings, NOT artificial entities or groups of associations that were conferred a charter to operate as their condition to exist. Again, the Framers were explicitly clear in this regard.

    “As for “strict construction”, what the Constitution does say, and very clearly too, is that free speech is so important that Congress shall pass no law restricting it.”

    Restricting it to PEOPLE. Furthermore, there are restrictions to free speech–child pornography, sedition, and slander, for starters.

    “It says nothing about whether the speaker is a person, an association of persons, a burning bush, or an intelligent gas from Pluto.”

    Actually, the Constitution is lucid regarding who specifically is eligible for these rights–We the People. Corporations are not people.

    “The decades of legislation and jurisprudence that you refer to as somehow being dispositive in this argument…”

    It is germane to the position of the Framers who demonstrated that political rights were inherent to natural born people.

    “The Citizens United decision was a long-overdue correction.”

    Interfering with decades of precedence is not a correction, but obfuscation of the will of the people. This case represents judicial activism by conservatives.

    Posted June 9, 2015 at 11:18 pm | Permalink
  32. Malcolm says

    Corvinus, old crow, we are unlikely to win each other over.

    I can see you are a last-word kind of guy. And so you shall have it.

    Posted June 10, 2015 at 12:19 am | Permalink

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