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Edited on Sun Sep-05-04 09:08 PM by arendt
I can't contribute as much as I used to, but on three day weekends,
I can get something done.
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Seven Commandments for Corporations
by arendt
Much as Esau claimed Jacob's birthright by deception, corporations have
claimed "personhood" under the U.S. Constitution. (Read Thomas Hartmann's
"Unequal Protection" for the facts behind the nefarious establishment of this
never-granted right.) Over the century they have held this personhood, they
have encroached increasingly on democratic government, shielding more
and more of their activities behind ludicrous and cynical analogies to personal
rights.
Funny thing, though - when you demand that corporations show some moral
restraint, they boldly declare themselves to be profit-maximizing machines
whose very charter demands "stockholderen uber alles". They claim they don't
have to behave morally, because they are not human.
Nice flip-flop. And, of course, the "all morality is personal morality" radical religious
right and their illegitimate cousins, the financial fundamentalists, give the corporations
a free pass on morality. The fundies have never met a corporate practice they find
"immoral", except for producing birth control devices and pornography.
Of course, those anti-intellectual thugs and cultists have never considered what
Jesus would do about corporations, because there are no corporations in the
Bible. They hadn't been invented yet. Isn't it convenient for the "values" crowd,
that the very organizations sucking the life out of our middle class democracy
are not called to account in the Bible?
But, that is where the corporate personhood angle comes into play. I submit
that the corporations have claimed and hidden behind the rights of people for
over a century. So, by their own choice, their practices should be judged by
human standards, not stockholder standards.
This immediately gets us into the sticky ground of whose moral standards to use.
Being a genuinely compassionate Christian, I will use the standard that the Christians
in Name Only (ChINOs) demand that we adopt as the law of our land, namely the Ten
Commandments. If its good enough for Jerry Falwell, its good enough for General
Motors.
If we stuck to the commandments, though, we would be indistinguishable from
Orthodox Jews. (In fact, one of the embarrassing facts for commandment idolaters
is that there are at least three different versions of the commandments: Protestant,
Catholic, and Jewish.) So, we must add some of the actual teachings of Jesus to be
sure corporations behave like Christians, not Old Testament Jews. What to pick?
Hmm. Here's something relevant to our investigation of worldly powers: "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Its not a commandment, but more of a meta-
commandment about how far you can stretch the authority of the Church. We will
use it in a moment.
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One thing people do agree on about the commandments is what behaviors they
are meant to regulate. Traditionally, the ten commandments are divided into three
groups:
- The first three commandments define the relationship between God and humans.
- The middle five commandments define the public relationships between humans.
- The last two commandments define rules for private thoughts.
Since this is America, the rules about private thoughts will have to come right off our list
of corporate commandments. We have freedom of speech, and that implies freedom of
thought. Also, while corporations figuratively rape our environment and our communities,
it makes no sense to talk of sexual adultery by corporate entities.
That leaves us with seven commandments. For impact, let's put the ones that deal
with the damage corporations do to people first, and leave the damage they do to
government for last.
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The Seven Commandments for Corporations
Commandments regulating relations between corporate entities and human persons:
..1. Honor your figurative father and mother, America's citizens, who labored to build you
........By not outsourcing their jobs and dodging your taxes with phony offshore shell corporations
..2. Corporations shall not kill or allow humans to die as a side-effect of profit-maximization. In other words:
..........You can't put marginal increases in profits above a doctor's duty to save lives, as HMOs do
..........You can't cover up lethal scientific evidence, as the tobacco companies did about lung cancer
..........You can't repeal the environmental laws and cleanup funds - polluter pays is common law
..........You can't lie about global warming with junk science, as the Bush Administration and Big Oil do
..3. Corporations shall not steal from individuals by bureacratic, financial, or legal scams, such as:
..........Predatory lending, and credit card loan-sharking by major banks
..........Commodity market manipulation, ala Enron
..........Looting Medicare, and soon, Social Security by privatizing them
..........Grabbing public lands at pennies on the dollar for mining, timber, cattle ranching, and oil drilling
..........Looting of corporations by rogue CEOs (Conrad Black/Richard Perle, Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers)
..........Buying votes for tax cuts for corporations and dumping the bills on everyone else and their kids
..4. Corporations shall not bear false witness, such as:
..........Buying the media lock, stock, and barrel; and setting up a Ministry of Propaganda, with Fox News at the helm
..........Funding astro-turf political movements, push polling, political smear campaigns against military veterans
..........Giving legislation Orwellian names - Clean Skies (more pollution), Constitution Restoration (theocracy)
..........Funding and publicizing anti-environmental junk scientists and their bogus claims
Commandments regulating relations between corporate entities and the legitimate Constitutional government:
....In the sense that the government granted charters to them, the government has created corporations.
....From the corporations' point of view, the government has given them life, and can take it away. Government
....is as close to a God as an inanimate legal fiction can know. Therefore, the corporations should treat
....government the way human beings treat God - with respect, if not devotion.
....To be clear: no blasphemy is meant below, where religious phrases are used to invoke the duty corporations
....have, under the law, to the government of citizens that suffered these behemoths to roam free.
..5. Honor the government and the sabbath, as the Constitutional Separation of Church and State commands
.........."Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and unto God the things that are God's" - Jesus
..........By keeping the Church out of the State: no religious bodies should be contracted to perform government services
..........By keeping the State out of the Church: the US is not now and never has been a Christian theocracy
..........By not privatizing the secular public educational system at the heart of democracy, or turning it over to religious fanatics
..........By not politicizing or religiously censoring the impartial scientific advice that has fueled our innovative economy
..6. Corporations shall not take the government's name in vain
..........Stop bashing the government which chartered you and which protects you with its military and its courts
..........Stop funding re-tread Trotskyites, like Grover Norquist, to wage unremitting guerilla war against government
..........Stop paying the Federalist Society to pack the courts with revisionist judges with a Robber Baron agenda
..7. Corporations shall have no allegiances before the American Republic, such as:
..........Secret multi-national corporate tribunals that refuse to admit governments (GATT, WTO)
..........Fanatical and secretive religious fundamentalist organizations (Council on National Policy, Opus Dei)
..........Neoconservative think tanks that slot into the Pentagon and start wars of agression (PNAC, OSP)
..........Private corporations running the democratically-supervised state monopoly on violence (Haliburton, Wackenhut)
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Now those are some commandments that I would like to see obeyed. But, sadly, the reaction from the other side
is predictable. This will be called communism and blasphemy, and probably perversion as well. The party line
from the Right these days is more twisted than the pretzel that choked W. Its like crime scene tape that manages to
exclude all the evidence, instead of including it.
Still, it will be interesting to hear them come out against the basic moral prohibitions: killing, stealing, lying, and
betrayal. On the other hand, if the Chinos and the other right wing storm troopers accept that the Ten Commandments
might be applicable to corporate entities, then we might finally have some common ground to discuss. Maybe we could
get these commandments chiseled in stone and follow ex-Judge Roy Moore around the country as he runs for
Ayatollah. It would be interesting to see how fast all this Biblical law bunkum gets shut down if it started to work
against our corporate masters.
Peace be with you. (soon to be a trademark of Haliburton, Inc.)
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