Citizenship

                In one of the most controversial and antidemocratic Supreme Court decisions influenced by Scalia’s hypocritical notion of ‘constructivism,’ the court ruled in Citizens United that corporations had the same first amendment rights as individuals.  The decision opened the flood gates of ‘dark money’ that has crippled the democratic process, skewing elections toward a hand full of very rich donors, think the Koch brothers, who are able to hide their influence and meddling behind shell entities.  What our democracy faces now is predicated on the notion that rights do not necessarily imply citizenship That is, that corporations have the ‘rights’ of individuals without the responsibility of citizenship.

                Naomi Zack frames the issue by distinguishing between the social contract and the social compact.  The contract contains all the legal and constitutional elements of the democracy, while the compact is the ethical and moral commitment that citizens in the society have to each other.  Without the compact, the contract quickly erodes into clever lawyering and constitutional chicanery.  It is the commitment to the compact, the values and ethics that ground the relational foundation of a democracy that keep that democracy alive and vital.  The court failed to see that extending the rights of the contract to entities with no commitment to the compact was a recipe for undermining and unraveling the foundations of the democracy.

                Corporations shouldn’t have the rights of citizens if they are unwilling to also assume the responsibility of the compact, of acting in accordance the values of fairness and humane treatment we depend on in a democracy.  This rupture between the contract and the compact is the main reason that capitalism is destructive to democracy.  We expect corporations to be driven by the bottom line.  Trump has even bragged that paying little or no taxes is a sign of a smart businessman.  It may be, but it is not a quality of good citizenship.  Making money is fine if it can be done within the framework of the compact.  We tend to only hold corporations accountable to the law, but their larger civic responsibility is to the values that sustain the democracy.  Obviously, that isn’t happening.

                Every day we are confronted with another regulation being rolled back or another tax break targeted to the already obscenely rich, as if the only thing that makes us a democracy are the rights that individuals and corporations (even political parties) have is to (barely) follow the law.  That may be a legalistic and formal minimum for a democracy, but it will never produce a sustainable society.  No one, individual or corporate, should enjoy the rights of the contract without living within the commitments of the compact.  We have reified the idea of the law, thereby separating it from the social and relational contexts that create it.  Any society that conflates being legal with being moral is doomed.

                We need to stop apologizing for demanding that there be an ethical component to democratic citizenship.  Anyone who isn’t willing to uphold the compact is not a citizen, and certainly not a patriot.  You may have rights, but they are only legitimate in the context of the values and ethical standards that create and support them.  It doesn’t help that we have a president and majority leader who have contempt for both the contract and the compact.  To them, this is just a game they play to enrich themselves and those around them.  In that kind of culture, babies are torn out of their mother’s arms at the border, the ocean is filled with plastic and more and more life forms are fading into extinction.  This cannot last.

                It’s fine to be absorbed in policy and spend your time combing over the details of each candidate’s health care plan.  But the more important question is what values does that plan promote?  If we’re going to put profit above all else, then we will never have an equitable program.  The most salient part of those values we need reflects most directly on the environment.  Wealth that is driven by destruction really isn’t wealth at all.  Burning oil to make money isn’t any better than selling meth to school children.  It is our values and relationships that sustain our democracy, not the rights of corporations.