What's a Person?

[Mythsaje]

A person is born of woman, a combination of the genetic traits of both parents. A person may be male or female, of any nationality, healthy or disabled, born into any family background. A person starts unable to focus its eyes, unable to even hold its own head up. It must sit up before it can crawl, crawl before it can walk, and walk before it can run. Or it may not be able to do many of these things, if it is born with some physical infirmity that makes it impossible. It breaths, and eats, and eliminates waste.

A person learns, adapts, and grows, observing the things around it and learning from these observations at an astounding rate. It learns to speak, its first words often being "mama" or "dada."

It celebrates birthdays and grows older in the eyes of the law. It goes to school, and learns how to read, to write, to work mathematics. It learns the history of its culture, and makes friends, and slowly evolves as a human being as it grows.

It grows to adulthood, falls in love, and loses love. It makes mistakes and pays for those mistakes. It learns the value of work, and the value of money. (hopefully).

It marries, if it's allowed to marry the person it loves that much, and may have a child of its own.

A person is born with the right to speak its mind, to follow the spiritual path dictated by its conscience, to defend itself against aggression. A person is mortal, and, as it grows older, grasps the meaning of this mortality. Someday it will fade from the earth, leaving only the memories of its life for others to cling to.

A corporation is formed for the sole purpose of making money. It does not breathe, though it may consume and produce waste. It does not have a beating heart of its own, and cannot grasp its own mortality or morality. It does not LIVE. It is an artificial construct that does not exist independently of its collective parts. It cannot feel pain, or guilt, though its individual members may feel these things. It cannot die, or be physically harmed. It cannot suffer for its mistakes and it cannot love.

It is NOT a person. It should not have the rights of a person. It is not born, does not learn to speak, does not crawl, walk, or run. It cannot grasp its own mortality because it is not mortal. It does not exist to propagate itself, it exists to maintain its own existence.

Not a person.

Not even close.

Respect REAL people. END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD.

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. Absolutely.

If we don't end this absurd idea of "corporate personhood" we go nowhere. The usual response to any attempt at REAL campaign finance reform is "well corporations have the right to freedom of speech, don't they?"

No, they don't. Except under this LIE that they are "persons". Remove that lie, and you take a huge step in demolishing everything else that's wrong with this country- elections, media, REAL health care reform, etc.

[anonymous171]

2. Agreed. Corporations, as immortal artificial entities, have no constitutional rights.

Only American citizens do.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. K&R

thank you.

[pscot]

4. Tell that to the Supremes

And good luck.

[Mythsaje]

5. Truth is truth, whether they see it or not. n/t

[Mythsaje]

6. I really think this is one of the base questions of our democracy...

From it, nearly all of our ills have come. What say you?

[pscot]

10. Of course

But how do we change it?

[Homer Wells]

7. Off to the GREATEST with you!!

Well said, indeed!!

[blonndee]

8. I remember reading this years ago.

Brilliant! Did you write this and post it here a few years ago?

[Mythsaje]

9. Yep...

Thought it was a good time to recycle it.

[blonndee]

11. It is. I loved it so much I emailed it with the link to a bunch of friends.

I'm glad that you posted it. I didn't even know about "corporate personhood" until I read your post way back when. :)

[Mythsaje]

14. That's great!

It's one of my big issues. I think it's a betrayal of our whole legal system and democratic values. It's one thing to create corporations to diminish personal legal responsibility for the corporate's actions, it's another to then turn around and pretend it has the same rights as someone who CAN be held responsible.

[Bjorn Against]

12. And if they were a person they would have to follow the same laws as people do

They tell us that corporations are persons, but they only want the benefits of personhood and not the responsibility. If a corporation is a person then we should be able to arrest those corporations when they break the law and put them on trial, but when it comes to criminal law the defenders of corporate personhood are suddenly not so keen on the idea of corporations being persons. They think that corporations should have all the rights of people but none of the responsibility. I say rather than fighting over whether a corporation is a person or not let's demand that they make up their damned minds, are they going to accept the responsibilities that come with personhood or will they acknowledge that they are not people and should not have the same rights as people? It is time to stop letting them have it both ways, because believe me if corporations had to follow the same rules people had to follow their executives would not want their organization to be considered a person because they know that a person who caused as much destruction as they cause would end up in prison.

[Mythsaje]

13. The notion of a corporation is to negate individual responsibility

in legal terms--one "officer" or "shareholder" is not responsible for the actions of the corporation as a whole. As far as I'm concerned, there's no question of whether they should be treated as a person. The whole legal purpose is one of obfuscation and deflection, so it's very difficult to hold individuals legally liable for their actions based on the whole concept of a corporation in the first place. I say eliminate the whole "personhood" model completely. If they cannot be held responsible as citizens, they don't get to pretend to be citizens.

[Bjorn Against]

16. Yeah we do need to eliminate corporate personhood, but bringing up responsibility makes them squirm

When they are forced to defend why a corporation is a person in some cases but not in others that puts them on the defensive. Instead of us having to explain why corporations should not have rights it forces them to defend why a corporation should have rights but not responsibilities and that is a position that will not go over well in the public. We want to end corporate personhood, and the way to do that is to make sure the debate is framed in a way that shows how ridiculous the position that corporations are not persons really is.

[Mythsaje]

17. Makes sense... Now we just need a way to communicate it to the masses n/t

[Dragonfli]

15. K&R