Here's an exercise for you, Eddie and Carol. Put two calculators side by side.
One one start counting the number of people who have been lifted out of abysmal
poverty by the corporations you hate. Start with the fact that 100 years ago, 95%
of the people spent all their working time, which was proably 12 hours a day,
putting a bare minimum of food on the table. They didn't have refrigeration,
radios, electricity, automobiles, anti-biotics, telephones, television, leisure
time etc etc. On the other calculator start adding up the number of poor people
who were killed by progessives in the fight to take away the rights of
coporations that produced these wonders. When you reach 100 million on both
calculators, you can stop and think about how ridiculous your crusade and its
concerns look to noral humanity.
Carrol Cox wrote:
> radman wrote:
>
> > From: "Eddie Black" <eddiecoyote@earthlink.net>
> > Subject: RE: How do we win?
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > None of these are our enemy. Our enemy is the idea that a corporate entity
> > has the same rights, under the Constitution, as an American does.
>
> This won't quite do for several reasons. First of all, a dog might bite you
> but the idea of a dog won't. And, the Constitution meaning whatever
> judges say it means, corporate entities do in material fact have not only
> the same rights under the constituion as an American does but *more*
> rights. A corporation can't be sent to the gas chamber, for example, or
> beaten up by the police.
>
> But where did this right come from? Corporations did not in fact become
> central to the u.s. economy until well *after* the Court gave them
> protection under the 14th amendment. In other words the right came
> first, and that right was created by people very like the small shop
> owners that this post defends -- that is, small shop owners who wanted
> to become big owners. That's the trouble with little independent
> businessmen. They eventually eat each other up and the remainder become
> big corporate businessmen.
>
> It really is misleading to blame the big bad corporations. You should read
> Upton Sinclair's *Brass Check*, written a century ago, not about big
> corporations but about the individual and independent newspapaper owners
> who some people are so nostalgic for. Those independent publishers were
> every bit as nasty as any of the big media congomerates today. The publisher
> of the News Palladium in my home town of Benton Harbor Michigan used
> to publish lies every bit as vicious as any now published in the Wall St.
> Journal or any of the big conglomerates today.
>
> Carrol
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