Posts Tagged ‘supreme court’

In horrified recognition of the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations are entitled to the same free speech as individuals, I direct you to the excellent film The Corporation (by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan).

The film takes the bogus “corporations-have-the-same-rights-as-individuals” argument and dissects it like a frog in bio lab. The most depressingly humorous sequence in the movie takes this argument to its logical conclusion — if the corporation is the same as an individual, then it is subject to psychiatric diagnosis. By the standards of the DSM-IV, the corporation is conclusively shown to be suffering from psychosis.

To paraphrase Barney Frank — speaking in a different context — corporations are not created by God, they are created by greedy men. Thus they should be subject to human regulation, and not entitled to the “inalienable rights” due to those of us who didn’t ask to be born.

*Sigh*. We are entering yet another dark era. Enjoy the film, and get pissed.





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The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’hair

  • Author: Bryan F. Lebeau
  • Year: 2005
  • Publisher: New York University Press
  • ISBN: 0814751725

This was a very thorough biography of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the loudmouthed spokesmodel for modern atheism. She and her son (who later denounced her and turned to born-again Christianity) sued the Maryland Schools for having prayer sessions, and won in the Supreme Court. She parlayed that notoriety into a career, gladly claiming the title of “The Most Hated Woman In America.”

As the book points out, O’Hair wasn’t necessarily an original atheist thinker, she was more of a populizer. But that is not to say that she was not intelligent in her own right: her own writings and speeches are extremely tart, incisive and often funny.

I worry and wonder about her alleged forays into anti-Semitism and nasty homophobia… but apart from that reservation I would say she was a pretty remarkable character.

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