Jim DeMint ignores the Supreme Court
help!
Jim DeMint said that “collective bargaining has no place in representative democracy”. Well clearly he doesn’t understand the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205. “If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of the court’s conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”
The Republican Senator from South Caroline misses the whole point if he thinks for a moment that organizations of citizens have no right to engage in democratic discourse. While the worst of that judgement may mean that financial corporations have the unbridled right to spend their shareholders profits in the gaming of the system, it assures that “we the people” (the collective part) have the right the petition and solicit (the bargain part) our government, and our institutions. Our voices cannot be silenced just because some institutional flunky doesn’t like the message.
DeMint may not want to hear the message; he may wish to ignore the message; he may choose to disengage with those messaging. Eventually bands of thinking South Carolinians will vote for someone unwilling to make that mistake.