Perhaps, taking a page from Clarence Thomas, we can pursue a different path. If money is speech that secures outsized influence and access for the wealthiest citizens, maybe the problem is not the presence of money in politics but the distribution of money in the economy.
As radical as that claim may sound today, it has been the heart and soul of democratic argument since the founding of the republic. Noah Webster, of American dictionary fame, claimed in 1790 that “the basis of a democratic and a republican form of government is a fundamental law favoring an equal or rather a general distribution of property.” Without that equal distribution of wealth and power, “liberty expires.”
If money is speech, the implication for democracy is clear. There can be no democracy in the political sphere unless there is equality in the economic sphere. That is the real lesson of Clarence Thomas.
In American Crapitalism, Money is power so if we have rampant inequality in money/wealth we will have rampant inequality in power.
Tax the fucking rich.
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