Last Saturday I skulked along at the margins of the anti-prorogation march through downtown Toronto. I kept an open notebook and a journalist’s bland expression but I have to admit my heart was with the crowd, particularly the university-aged organizers who clearly were in it for the right reasons.
Walied Khogali, a student at U of T and one of the chief organizers, seemed genuinely awestruck at the turnout. “We started with an organizing meeting at Hart House and drew 200 people now we’ve got something like 210,000 members on Facebook. This crowd is amazing; people bought their kids. ”
There was something genuinely idealistic and sweet about his enthusiasm. That said, a half hour survey of the crowd elucidated a somewhat less sanguine observation. The signs and chants said it all: “That (with an arrow pointing at a photo of Stephen Harper) is what hypocrisy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.” “Harper you can’t hide from war crimes.” “Hey hey ho ho Stephen Harper’s got to go.”
And finally among a batch of slightly inebriated U of T students arose the chant “Harper is a wanker, Harper is a wanker.” A disapproving titter went up from the crowd — a little too naughty for a polite Canadian crowd. Still the tenor of the Toronto event reinforced what the Harperites would dismiss as the inherently partisan aspect of the protest.
It seems these days that advocating for democracy has itself become a partisan enterprise. Last week’s 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing corporations unrestricted spending in favour of political candidates or causes (all in the name of “free speech“) gave rive rise to a mighty dissent from Justice John Paul Stevens, delivered viva voce from the bench. Stevens didn’t pull any punches in describing the ill effects of overturning, at a single stroke, a century of precedent in this regard:
“The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it…
Unlike natural persons, corporations have ‘limited liability’ for their owners and managers, ‘perpetual life,’ separation of ownership and control, ‘and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets . . . that enhance their ability to attract capital and to deploy their resources in ways that maximize the return on their shareholders’ investments.’ 494 U. S., at 658–659. Unlike voters in U. S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled.
Unlike other interest groups, business corporations have been ‘effectively delegated responsibility for ensuring society’s economic welfare’; they inescapably structure the life of every citizen. ‘[T]he resources in the treasury of a business corporation,’ furthermore, ‘are not an indication of popular support for the corporation’s political ideas.’ Id., at 659 (quoting MCFL, 479 U. S., at 258).
‘They reflect instead the economically motivated decisions of investors and customers. The availability of these resources may make a corporation a formidable political presence, even though the power of the corporation may be no reflection of the power of its ideas.’ 494 U. S., at 659 (quoting MCFL, 479 U. S., at 258). It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.
Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. These basic points help explain why corporate electioneering is not only more likely to impair compelling governmental interests, but also why restrictions on that electioneering are less likely to encroach upon First Amendment freedoms.”
In conclusion, Stevens notes with more than a hint of bitterness that: “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
In a piece subsequent to the decision Adam Liptak, The Times’s supreme court reporter, noted that the 89 year old Stevens, who will likely retire from the court this year, has evinced a common theme in many of his recent opinions: “that the Supreme Court had lost touch with fundamental notions of fair play.” Or, to state it more plainly, its democratic impulse. The Court has acted in this case to balance the efforts (paltry though they may be) on the part of the Obama administration at redistribution by setting loose the dogs of American commerce, whose interests have never been particularly democratic in nature.
Tonight, in the face of this and his other recent political setbacks, Obama gives his first State of the Union Address. It’s an opportunity to bite back at his tormentors. In a sense, though, Obama’s beaten even before he begins, since like that crowd buzzing around the Eaton Centre last Saturday his efforts at protecting the fading ember of democracy will no doubt be portrayed by the other side as just another bleating voice of partisan demagoguery.
