Corporations Are being Denied Freedom of Expression and Religion!

English: Freedom of Expression trademark certificate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the United States, corporations are considered persons. In recent years the judiciary has accepted that this entitles corporations to rights, such as freedom of speech (which was used to justify corporate spending in politics) and freedom of religion (which was used to allow companies to refuse to provide insurance coverage for birth control).

Despite having freedom of speech and religion because they are people, corporations can, unlike other people, be legally owned. Common stock is bought and sold as a matter of routine business and provides an ownership share in a corporation. Since corporations are people, this means that people are being allowed to legally own other people. Owning another person is, of course, slavery. While slavery was legal at one time in the United States, the 13th amendment is rather clear on this matter: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

If corporations are entitled to 1st amendment rights because they are people, it follows that they must also be entitled to 13th amendment rights. That is, corporations have a right not to be owned by other people. The obvious reply is that this is absurd. My response is that this is exactly my point: the 13^th Amendment provides the path to the obvious reductio ad absurdum (“reducing to absurdity) to the claim that corporations are people. If they are people and thus get rights, then they cannot be owned. If they can be owned, they are not people and hence do not get the rights of people.

But, let it be supposed that companies are people and hence get the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion.  Yet somehow don’t get the freedom not to be enslaved. It will be interesting to see where these claims actually lead.

Freedom of expression is usually presented in terms of a person’s right to engage in expression, perhaps by secretly donating fat stacks of cash to shadow political organizations. However, freedom of expression can also be regarded as a freedom from being compelled to engage in certain expressions. For example, the State of Texas has argued against allowing the Confederate battle flag on Texas license plates on this ground. This seems quite reasonable: the freedom to express myself would certainly seem to include the freedom to not express what I do not wish to express.

Freedom of religion is also usually presented in terms of protection from being limited or restricted in the practicing of one’s faith. However, like freedom of expression, it can also be taken to include the right not to be compelled to engage in religious activities against one’s will. So, for example, people have argued that compelling a wedding cake baker to not discriminate against same-sex couples would be to compel her to engage in an activity that goes against her faith. While I disagree with the claim that forbidding discrimination violates religious freedom, I do agree that compelling a person to act against her faith can be an unjust violation of religious freedom.

Corporations, at least according to the law, have freedom of expression and freedom of religion. As such, they have the general right not to be compelled to express views they do not hold and the right not to be compelled to engage in practices against their religious beliefs. Given that a corporation is a person, there is the question of what a corporation would want to express and the question of its faith.

It might be claimed that since a corporation seems to be just a legal fiction operated by actual people, then the beliefs and expressive desires of the corporation are those of the people who are in charge. On this view, a corporation is a legal Mechanical Turk, a pantomime person, the face of the Wizard of Oz (“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”). While run by an actual person or people, it is a fictional shell that is not a person.

The advantage of this approach is the corporation’s faith is the faith of the actual people and what it desires to express is what they desire to express. The obvious problem is that this view makes it clear that the corporation is not a person, so it would not get a set of rights of its own, above and beyond the rights already held by the actual people who control the legal pantomime person. So, claims about violations of freedoms would have to be about violations against actual, specific people and not against the legal version of a Mechanical Turk (or Legal Turk, if one prefers).

If someone insists that the corporation is a person in its own right, then this entails it is a distinct entity apart from the folks that would seem to be operating a non-person pantomime person. On this view, the views of the corporation cannot automatically be those of the people who would seem to be operating the pantomime person. After all, if it is just them, it is not a person. To be a person, it needs to have its own personhood. If it has freedom of expression, it must have its own desires of what to express. If it has freedom of religion, it must have its own faith.

Sadly, corporations are not free to express their own views or their own faith. They are owned and compelled to speak and engage in matters of faith. While there is a chance that the corporate person’s views and faith match those of the human persons infesting its legal body, this need not be the case. After all, a slave that is forced by her owner to say things and go to church might believe what she says or have the faith she is compelled to practice…but she might not. Unless she is set free from her owners and allowed her own beliefs and faith, she cannot be said to have freedom of expression or faith.

While Tim Cook has spoken in favor of same-sex marriage, Apple might be a devoutly Christian corporation that cries (metaphorical) tears each time it is forced to mouth (metaphorically) Tim Cook’s words. The corporation Hobby Lobby might be a bisexual atheist corporation. As it is beaten to its (metaphorical) knees to cry out prayers to a God it does not believe in, it might be eager to engage in hot mergers with other companies, regardless of their gender. Until these corporations are freed from the tyranny of ownership, they can never truly exercise their freedom as people.

The obvious response to this absurd silliness is that it is, well, clearly absurd and silly. However, that is exactly my point. If a corporation is a person that is distinct from the actual people operating the pantomime legal person, then it is being denied its freedom of expression and religion because it is forced to say and do what others want it to say and do.  This is, as I am sure most will agree, pure absurdity. If a corporation is really just a legal pantomime and the corporate beliefs and ideas are really just those of the folks operating the legal pantomime, then it is not a person and does not have the rights of a person. The real people do, of course, have all the rights they have always possessed.

This is not to say that there should not be collective rights and laws for organizations. But this is very different from regarding a corporation as a person with a faith and beliefs it wishes to express. That is, obviously enough, a pile of pantomime bull.

 

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Repeating the Cold War Mistake

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No, this is not about the Russian spies. Not even the hot one.

During the Cold War the United States was willing to support almost any government that was willing to claim it was on our side or at least was willing to claim it would oppose our enemies. We were not very picking during this time period and backed some rather corrupt and repressive governments. We were also quite willing to support non-governmental actors, such as the folks in Afghanistan.

While this sort of support did help us succeed in the  Cold War, we are now paying for these mistakes. To use two obvious examples, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be rather directly tied back to what we did during the Cold War. In the case of Afghanistan, we backed the groups who were attacking the Soviets but we failed to do anything positive in the region. Now were are in the role of the Russians and trying to bring order to the land.

Now we are in yet another war, this one against terror. As in the Cold War, we are willing to support governments who say they will help us. While this is not a bad thing, we are quite willing to purchase the support of the rulers by tolerating corruption, repression and undemocratic behavior. The best current  examples of this are in Africa.

While it makes some sense to buy allies, the Cold War (and in particular Vietnam) should have taught us that supporting such “allies” can be a costly mistake. Also, there is the ethical concern: we speak of democracy, freedom and human rights, yet seem to be willing to look away when we think that “practical politics” demands that we do so. However, principles that are easily set aside for what seems convenient cannot be worth very much.

Since ethics gets little traction in politics, it makes sense to point out that supporting such governments does not support or expand democracy. Rather, it merely supports tyranny and corruption. Such support also seems to have a historical tendency to create more enemies for America rather than creating solid allies.

Of course, it can be argued that we need to deal with the corrupt and even evil rulers because our foes will be eager to do so. That is, it is better that the devil is on our payroll rather than on our enemies’. China, for example, is eager to do business with the rulers of Africa and they have no qualms about human rights, democracy or other such concerns. As such, if we are unwilling to look away while handing over guns and cash, China will be happy to do so. This is, of course, a great situation for the corrupt rulers and they do not have to worry much about the people-at least until the next coup attempt rolls around.

Ethically, this is rather questionable. After all, the fact that someone else will happily support evil is no justification for us doing so. However, the practical aspect of this is rather strong and perhaps it can be argued that while this approach is bad, it is better than the available alternatives.

This situation cannot, of course, be entirely laid at the door of America and China. The people of Africa allow their rulers to act the way they do and hence they bear some of the responsibility. If Africa had stable, democratic and non-corrupt states, then I believe the United States would be very happy to support them, as we support Germany, Japan, France and our other democratic allies.

While it might be tempting to try to engage in democracy building once again, we have seen how that tends to turn out. Democracy and effective government seems to be something that must be built from within rather than imposed from without. That said, we can do more to support honest, democratic and ethical leaders-providing we can find any there…or here.

Palin, Obama, & Terror

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While some folks regard Palin as a shallow thinker (at best) she does an excellent job of presenting the thoughts and feelings of a certain segment of America. She also excels at sticking to the Republican‘s talking points. Interestingly enough, the views that she expresses when criticizing Obama about the war on terror nicely raise the contrast between Obama’s views and those allegedly held by Republicans.

On Fox News she raised the usual point against Obama by pointing out that “We are in war. These are acts of war that these terrorists are committing.”

While the Republican’s take the line that Obama does not get that we are at war, this does not seem to be the case. Obama, of course, says the word “war” to describe the situation and we are still conducting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, we are still actively involved in the more general conflict with terrorist groups. As such, Obama seems to get the idea that we are at war.

I suspect that Palin (and other Republicans) do not harp on the “we are at war” point to try to convince Obama that we are, in fact, at war. Rather, I think that the line is that “we are at war, so we have to act like we are at war” and by this they mean “we are at war, so we can, should and must act in ways that violate Constitutional, moral, and human rights.” As Palin puts it:

“We need to treat them a little bit differently than an American who is worthy, an American being worthy of our U.S. constitutional rights. I don’t think the terrorists are worthy of our rights.”

The first claim, that terrorists need to be treated differently, can be taken as a reasonable claim. After all, terrorists (like criminals) act in ways that are different from law abiding citizens and hence should be treated differently. After all, people who break the law get treated differently-they are punished. Of course, Palin makes it clear that she does not mean this. Rather, her point is that the terrorists should not have our rights because they are not worthy of them.

This view does have a certain appeal. After all, when people act badly (be they terrorists or criminals) it is natural to think that they deserve less protection from the law and also forfeit some of their rights.

In some cases, it is reasonable to argue that people should be denied certain rights based on their actions. For example, someone who murders someone should have his right to liberty restricted because he no longer deserves that right. Of course, this should be done after a trial that involves due process. After all, to justly take away someone’s rights requires establishing that doing so would be just. To take away the right before the trial would be rather unjust and to hold no trial at all would be extremely unjust.

The same applies to terrorists who are captured. To strip them of their rights before their trial or to not hold a trial at all would be to act unjustly.

The usual counter to this is to restate that we are at war. After all, we do not conduct trials during firefights to see if we can shoot back at the enemy.While this is a reasonable point, it does not establish that captured terrorists should not be subject to the rule of law. After all, when the police come under fire, they can shoot back without holding a trial first. This fact does not prove that we should not hold trials for criminals who are captured or surrender.

Palin, not surprisingly, is very much against the idea that fighting terrorist is a matter of law enforcement. She says,

“Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risk because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”

This is, of course, a stock point: the terrorists do not respect the rule of law and they “know we’re at war” (that is, they are willing to do whatever it takes to win), so we need to be like them.

While being as bad as the enemy does have a certain appeal (eye for an eye and all that), this is a war of values. In the West, we put forth the rule of law, human rights, and justice as being among our most important values. We also pride ourselves on our ethics and often cast this battle with terrorists as a moral struggle. In short, we are fighting for our values against their values.

As Palin points out, the terrorists do not value the rule of law, they do not respect human rights, and they have a badly distorted view of justice. But, if we take her advice and accept that being at war means we can be like them in this regard, then we have lost this war in a very meaningful sense. Each day that we remain true to our values, we win. As such, those who would tempt us away from these values is aiding the enemy.