George Will, in a recent WAPost column "Taking a scythe to the Bill of Rights", makes a touching statement (and I've got to say that the poetic use of the word "scythe" in the title evokes an ugly picture of unholy Death leering at the Bill of Rights):
Controversies can be wonderfully clarified when people follow the logic of illogical premises to perverse conclusions. For example, two academics recently wrote in the British Journal of Medical Ethics that “after-birth abortions” — killing newborn babies — are matters of moral indifference because newborns, like fetuses, “do not have the same moral status as actual persons” and “the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant.” So killing them “should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”
Hmm, obviously something that must be publicly discussed. Human life should not be so cheaply dismissed.
But, turns out, that's not George's point...
George is having a royal conniption over some legislation tendered by Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-03) which George argues "proposes a constitutional amendment to radically contract First Amendment protections."
Does McGovern's amendment compromise the precious life of newly born infants which "like fetuses, 'do not have the same moral status as actual persons' and 'the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant'"?
Um, er, no.:
His “People’s Rights Amendment” declares that the Constitution protects only the rights of “natural persons,” not such persons organized in corporations, and that Congress can impose on corporations whatever restrictions Congress deems “reasonable.” His amendment says that it shall not be construed “to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and all such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.” But the amendment is explicitly designed to deny such rights to natural persons who, exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of association, come together in corporate entities to speak in concert.
Oooo! The precious life of persons organized in corporations. How dare he, McGovern, seek “to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and all such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.” Such inalienable rights cannot be denied to the entity of the corporation, "to natural persons who, exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of association, come together in corporate entities to speak in concert."
McGovern has the audacity to decree that corporate entities have no constitutional rights, that such entities are to be regulated by the likes of Congress and state and local governments.
No! By God! Almighty God George Will has decreed that there shall be no Ten Commandments of any sort governing the entities created by various levels of government, but, by God! these government-created entities shall enjoy all of the inalienable rights set forth in the U.S. Bill of Rights to persons designated in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights
I had not realized, until Almighty God George Will set me straight, that the Creator of us humans was also the almighty Creator of all these doggone corporations all over the world and that said Creator has endowed all His "creations" with the inalienable rights of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
And George makes it plainly clear -- it's those damned liberals:
By proposing his amendment, McGovern helpfully illuminates the lengths to which some liberals want to go. So when next you hear histrionic warnings about tea party or other conservative “extremism,” try to think of anything on the right comparable to McGovern’s proposed vandalism of the Bill of Rights.
Of course there are no extremist righties.