Question 1

How many times does the word "corporation" appear in the United States Constitution?

Accepted Answer

The Constitution was written entirely to define the rights of individual people and the structure of government. Corporations are not mentioned anywhere in the document. The Founders wrote "We the People," not "We the People and Their Business Entities." Every right in the Constitution was designed to protect living, breathing human beings from government overreach.

Question 2

The First Amendment protects "the freedom of speech." What did the Founders mean by "speech" when they wrote it?

Accepted Answer

The Founders wrote the First Amendment to protect individual human beings from having their voices silenced by the government. They were thinking about pamphlets, public debate, religious expression, and the press. The idea that spending millions of dollars on political advertising is the same thing as a person speaking their mind would have been unrecognizable to the people who drafted the Bill of Rights.

Question 3

What does the 14th Amendment actually say about who has constitutional rights?

Accepted Answer

The 14th Amendment uses the word "persons" and specifically says "born or naturalized." Corporations are not born. They are not naturalized. They are legal constructs created by filing paperwork with a state government. The amendment was written after the Civil War to guarantee rights to formerly enslaved human beings, not to give constitutional protections to business entities.

Question 4

Why is the idea that "money equals speech" a fundamental distortion of the First Amendment?

Accepted Answer

If money is speech, then billionaires have millions of times more "speech" than ordinary citizens. The First Amendment was meant to be an equalizer, giving every person the same right to express themselves regardless of wealth or status. Treating political spending as protected speech effectively creates a system where the rich can drown out everyone else, which is the opposite of what the Founders intended when they built a government accountable to the people.

Question 5

The Founders specifically warned about the dangers of what in a democratic republic?

Accepted Answer

Multiple Founders wrote extensively about the threat of wealthy factions corrupting democratic governance. James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 about the dangers of factions driven by economic interests. Thomas Jefferson warned that banking institutions and moneyed corporations would destroy the republic if left unchecked. The Founders understood that concentrated money in politics was a direct threat to self government, which is exactly what Citizens United enabled.

Did you know the Citizens United ruling is Unconstitutional?

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