University Chronicle

Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: Opinion

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In 1960, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, said, "America will fail without a shot being fired."

We managed to outlast his own country by two decades, but, unfortunately, his prophecy proved itself to be true. Historians of the future (if the future will allow historians) may note July 4, 1776 and January 21, 2010 as the two most important dates in the history of the nation once known as the United States of America. One represented its beginning and the other could in all likelihood represent its end.

Welcome to the new America, not the "land of the free and the home of the brave," but a land now ruled by corporate fascism or, as House majority whip James Clyburn called it, a "corpocracy."

The Supreme Court ruled Jan. 21 in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations can now make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. What this means is that they can pick the candidates of their choice and can discard these candidates at their convenience.

"We the people," have thus lost any power we previously had. Our vote will not be important because we will only have a choice between two candidates hand-picked by giant corporations.

This is not a political issue, but a moral one that all Americans should agree on. President Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain and Ralph Nader all agree on it. Both liberal filmmaker Michael Moore and an attorney for George W. Bush derided the decision. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has spoken out against this ruling. The website veteranstoday.com, an online community for U.S. Veterans went as far as to issue a "call for the immediate arrests of five supreme court justices for treason."

President Obama later said of the decision that he "can think of nothing more devastating to the public interest" and that the "ruling strikes at our democracy itself."

But the Supreme Court is, as usual, disconnected from the American people. Even if we learned nothing else from the economic crisis, we should have taken away the lesson that there was already far too much corporate control over America's leaders. However, this is even more of a mortal blow to our democracy than Bush v. Gore. In the former case they merely picked the President, but this time they are giving the rich the permission to control not just who is elected, but also who is running, for every single office in the nation from President to your local township trustee.

Continued...

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