The Business of America

At long last the Supreme Court has made a decision that real Americans can get solidly behind and ended second-class citizenship for long-oppressed corporations. Restricted for decades, their freedom of speech curtailed and stifled, corporations could only spend limited amounts on election campaigns; a disgraceful defiling of their First Amendment rights. Not since their greatest hour – preventing Al Gore from becoming president – has the court triumphed in the cause of free-market democracy. Finally corporations, their tiny voices choked by the campaign finance reform fanatics, can be heard throughout the land. Their long-overdue full personhood has been established, and they are now free to speak their minds, and support with their heard-earned fortunes the righteous and deserving. Bite on that liberal Democratic (redundant?) surrender-monkeys.

Only trouble is they didn’t go far enough. Everyone knows corporations are persons and deserving of individual rights – so why can’t they vote, or run for office, or get married if they want? Why are corporations left out in the cold, their little noses pressed up against the glass window and excluded from the warm inner sanctum of full citizenship? This was a glaring oversight in jurisprudence, but it’s only a matter of time. Rejoice fellow real Americans and imagine the incredible mess we’d be in now if Gore had become president. One shudders to think. We’d all be forced to marry trees and put clothing on animals.

A wise person once said, “The business of America is business,” and boy is that ever right! America IS a business, and who better to run America Inc. than a corporate CEO? Do you want some non-profit, social worker do-gooder running the show? Somehow those types, the entitlement-crazed, civil liberties-demanding, labor-worshipping, human rights babblers have hi-jacked government and turned it into a peacenik day care center. But those days are over thanks to our Supremes.

And don’t fall for those Democratic alarmist scare tactics about foreign governments stoking corporations to buy elections and their candidates of choice. What possible motive could China, Saudi Arabia or N. Korea have in manipulating American politics? And don’t be swayed by accusations of “activist judges” and right wing hypocrisy; everyone knows” activist judge” only apples to liberals. And don’t forget, we are America Inc., and we are always looking out for and listening to you. Rest easy, corporate America has your back; and all your other parts as well.

Will Shonbrun is a Sonoma writer and trouble-maker. His work can be seen at: http://shonbrunreport.blogspot.com. His seminal treatises, “Will Shonbrun is Not a Lunatic” and “You Wouldn’t Fart in the Presence of God” are out of print, but if you email him at: willshonbrun@vom.com he’ll send you something.

In Defense of Dueling

It’s time to bring back dueling. Yes, dueling, that ancient, time-honored way of settling disputes. It worked for our ancestors and even our revered founding fathers, save a fussy few, saw no problem with it. The trouble was women and others not considered full and equal citizens didn’t get to participate – another glaring weakness in our Constitutional system.

Now I know that some of the more weak-stomached, overly empathic, prissy rule-of-law types – read, Democrats, so-called progressives, organic tofu-munching, hybrid-driving, godless humanitarians et al. – might deem this a somewhat radical proposal. But consider: Dueling is totally bipartisan, non-discriminatory (with a little tweaking) as to gender, race, age, ethnicity or economic class, and American as apple pie and political corruption. Republicans, conservatives and libertarians should embrace it as it’s both very old school and keeps government’s nose out of our private affairs.

Democrats should welcome it as well as it would put an end to the tedious and bullying Senate filibuster. Furthermore it would hasten the settling of domestic disputes – women have a shooting gene as well; remember Annie Oakley? And it’s a handy way of dealing with one’s critics and other annoying malcontents.

In defense of dueling let us reflect on the service it lent our nation when the unfairly maligned Aaron Burr plugged ol’ Alex Hamilton before he could pen another of those nit-picking, elitist intellectual, legally dense Federalist Papers, which no one except Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees has ever read. Think of the degree of honesty dueling would bring to all business transactions – used car deals, credit card disputes, stock brokers and insurance sellers, real estate peddlers and a wide range of corporate CEOs. It surely would make someone think twice before trying to sell some poor sucker a phony bill of goods; politicians and bankers take note.

And it’s economical: only financial outlay is for a gun, and any school kid knows how cheap and readily available these are, and some bullets, which you can pick up at Wal-Mart’s. I like the old one-shot deals that came as pairs in hand-tooled wooden boxes myself, but I’m a sentimentalist. Think how much time and money it would save in courts, trials and lawyers. Almost eliminates any need for tort reform.

So for pennies on the dollar and a way to shrink government and make it work more smoothly – nothing focuses a politician on the need for alacrity and cooperation like the threat of being drilled by a colleague or constituent – dueling is the logical choice.

Let’s not get turned aside by a few queasy feelings, let’s suck it up like the real Americans we used to be, and get behind the God-given right to kill for our beliefs, or grievances, or whatever. Just go to: bringbackdueling.com to lend your support, and donate to this worth cause.