Supreme Court has made US into country of LIARS!

email Stephen L. Goldstein: trendsman@aol.com
Follow on Twitter: @drslgoldstein

            When The History of The Rise and Fall of The American Republic is written, its author will no doubt present, as an overarching thesis, that we “did it” to ourselves—sadly fulfilling former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s prediction during the Cold War that we would be “destroyed from within.” And he will surely point to 2010 and 2012 as decisive years in the collapse and brand the United States Supreme Court as a major agent of our self-destruction.

            In 2010, in Citizens United, a majority of the Court ruled that, under the protective halo of the First Amendment, the government could not limit the amount of money corporations and unions spend on “electioneering contributions.” In federal races, they still may not contribute directly to candidates’ campaigns and parties, but that hardly matters. As a result of the decision, a new mantra has entered popular speech—“Corporations are people”—and “a terrible [reality] is born”: our democratic republic has been turned into a plaything for plutocrats and a cash cow for political candidates. There can no longer be any pretense that our government is not for sale—regularly bought and sold.

            In 2012, in a lesser known, but no less seminal a “free speech” ruling, the Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006, which made it a federal crime for anyone to claim having received any U.S. military decoration or medal. Of course, that didn’t stop Californian Xavier Alvarez, a former member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District governing board in eastern Los Angles County, from claiming he was a retired Marine with 25 years of service and a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. As unthinkable as it may sound, the Supreme Court actually overturned Alvarez’s lower-court conviction, affirmed his right to lie about his military service, and denied the government the power to stop him—or anyone else from lying.

            Either ruling by itself is bad. But taken together, these two Supreme Court decisions, reached, of all things, on the basis of our most cherished Constitutional Amendment, create a moral climate that will bring us to the lowest point in our history, perhaps to our demise—if we aren’t there already. Today, we are treading water in a sea of filthy lucre, lies, and filthy lucre funding lies. It won’t be long before we drown.

            Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Of course, I’m for free speech! I’m a columnist. I couldn’t possibly be against it. I accept the fact that from the earliest years of our republic, politics has always been a nasty business. I’d like to, but know I can’t, wash Illinois Cong. Joe Walsh’s mouth out with soap for saying that his opponent, double-amputee Tammy Duckworth is not a “true” military hero, California Cong. David Dreier for saying that insurance companies should be allowed to discriminate against people with brain tumors, Florida Cong. Allen West for calling Social Security disability “a form of modern 21^st-century slavery,” and Maine Gov. Paul LePage for calling the U.S. Internal Revenue Service “the Gestapo.” Instead, I defend their right to say such atrocious things, confident in the wisdom of “give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves,” that their words will come back to haunt them.

            But what I’m completely against—and what I think everyone should want outlawed—is the license the Supreme Court has given to use unlimited money to finance unlimited, calculated, systematic lying to turn the government of the United States over to a small group of the richest of rich individuals and corporations at the expense of average Americans. Behind closed doors, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and others have to be laughing at the stupidity of the American public—and the complicity of the Court.

            In addition, I don’t know how we can continue to protect lies, just because they happened to be used in political campaigns. Surely, if we don’t have the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre, we shouldn’t be able to speak when our pants are “on fire.” Today, words travel at lightening speed. There is almost no time to correct errors and misinformation, let alone to counter intentional falsehoods. Someone needs to knock some sense into the Supremes.

            Perhaps, it isn’t too late for our collective American spirit to prove Khrushchev wrong and save ourselves from within. If not, he’ll be dancing on our grave from Communist heaven, and we will have helped write the closing chapter of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic.#