Mitt is Either Wrong or Lying; Corporations are NOT People

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Mitt Romney seemed very precise: "Of course, corporations are people, my friend!" His argument is as follows: corporations were made up of people; ergo: they ARE persons themselves.

That's fallacious of course! It's also a very bad re-write of Thomas Hobbes who described a Leviathan --a 'state' comprised of the people in it. But not even Hobbes would have dared to say that the 'state' IS a person! Being 'comprised' of people is not the same thing as being a 'being' a person.

As a person, I am made up of millions of cells, each of which replicate my DNA to some degree. But to say that EACH cell IS "ME" is absurd. What if I should prick my finger and I lose some blood? Have several hundred thousand 'people' died? Of course not!

Romney seemed to be arguing that because money that "...gets into people's pockets" does so by way of companies, companies are therefore 'people'! Again --his argument is not only fallacious but non-sensical! That workers are paid by corporations does not make people of corporations.

What about those 'people' not employed by the corporations about which Romeny spoke? Are we to believe that they are NOT people? In Romney's view, one must work or be indentured to a 'corporation' in order to be a person! That's absurd on its face. Clearly:

• Romney has never truly understood the issue and may be incapable of understanding it
• He is ignorant of the implications
• He needs to take remedial courses in elementary logic and biology
• Corporations are NOT and will never be 'people'

Let's consider Mitt's analogy in this way: if it were true that every cell in my body is a 'person', anyone cutting off my finger is, at least, guilty of assault and battery and possibly the cold-blooded murder of millions of little, micropscopic 'ME's". 

Being a 'person' occurs by virtue of being born of two members of the species: homo sapien! That is not the case with a corporation, any corporation, a corporation of any type! A corporation is, by definition, a charter, filed with a Secretary of State (most often Delaware); the charter outlines the corporate structure, lists the major officers and describes the 'type' of 'incorporation in legal terms. It is a NOT a person but simply a contract listing the major stockholders, summarizing the management and delegating various responsibilities. Certain accounting conventions follow but, certainly, no procedure has the God-like power to create 'persons' with a ledger book! No such combination of debits and credits has ever breathed life into inanimate objects and, by doing so, make 'people' of them!

When a corporation is given birth to by a woman as a result of her doing what human beings (persons) have done for thousands of years, then I might concur that corporations are persons. That will happn when pigs fly. And pigs WILL fly when I vote for a moron like Mitt Romney.

In the meantime, I suggest Mitt...

• go back to school
• take a biology course
• take two semesters of philosophy
• take two semesters of symbolic logic and one INTRO to the "Philosophy of Logical Analysis".

And ---corporations are NOT and never will be "people'!

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