I'm sure many of us now think there's very little difference between these two "poles" of our national "management" and this seems rational after our recent "bail outs" and the gift of two "wars" to our oil companies and defense contractors (not to mention our looming Insurance industry gift).
Now, I am one of those who thinks this appears more right than wrong and it would be perfectly legitimate to hold that government can and often should "get in bed" with corporate interests IF this is demonstrably beneficial to all of the citizenry (and more "equally" than just a "trickle"). However, it seems rather clear that the benefit of the corporate and government union stays at the top of the heap and the rest of us are left to pick garbage off the side of their yellow brick road.
Okay, that said, this is a post about this very "factionalism" within our Supreme Court. And it is true that within the court as in the nation and in the politics of governance there is this factionalism; this is the dichotomy that characterizes government as intrusive if it "impedes" individual liberties but does NOT hold the idea that a corporation can and does (almost as part of the business plan) impede individual liberties.
My take: Conservatives pay lip service to "liberty" and "self-determination" because, on the whole, they believe they deserve what they've got and they deserve more and have a right to MORE as part of that idea of "liberty". So regulations on the fatted calf of Capital become impositions on one's liberty, one's freedom to make more and have more money. This includes taxation; don't take from me what is mine (what I clearly deserve as a "producer" in society) to prop up the losers in this nation.
This means, get your "social contract" out of my face--take your equality and shove it.
The Citizens United case and recent gun law decisions seem to me to reflect this very perspective.
The Corporation is free to take its money and buy all opinion outlets it can and shove its view down your throat in such a way as you, feeble in resource as you are, have no way to oppose it.
And the truth about those horrible and extremely wealthy aristocrats--they are extremely selfish and self-serving. Listen, your taxes primarily pay for the war machine--and that's bad enough because we don't really even fund our social programs in a healthy and substantive way anymore--but they also pay for you schools and you keep voting to reduce the tax base for this. They pay for your libraries; they pay for your roads; your parks; and on and on. They don't pay crack whores to have more babies. Please stop thinking like that. It's just stupid and you are being played by the obscenely wealthy among us for fools.
Here's is the mind-blowingly simple thing that should be a kind of epiphanic explosion in your thinking: the wealthy don't NEED public institutions. Don't you understand this? They don't NEED government. YOU DO.
So be my guest, hate the collusion of government and corporations. But don't for one minute think that Republicans want to make you free. They want to be free to step on you to get more for themselves.
You "middle class" Republicans will of course disagree with this--but you are the people that have been snowed all along. You are the ones that keep voting for the Corporation.
You will consign us all to material and intellectual poverty.
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