The greatest thing about writing this column is being given the opportunity to share whatever is on my mind with you online. This sharing of my mind is something I have no problem doing. Just ask my wife, my family, my friends, most politicians I meet, and even total strangers, so here goes.
At a Tea Party type meeting the other night I was in the non-typical, for me, position of keeping my mouth shut and my ears open when I heard a gentleman complaining “that anyone who thought a corporation was the same as a person was crazy.” I do not know this man and as of now I do not even know his name. I will make a bet he is a very good person, a patriot, and a lover of our country. But he is also a victim of the misinformation that is destroying our republic.
In the mind of most of our fellow citizens, the “evil corporation” has replaced Satan himself as the cause of all the world’s problems. When good people of our nation think this way both Satan and Karl Marx are smiling. Before we go forward we need to look at the basic definitions of a corporation.
‘Websters New Collegiate Dictionary,’ Copyright 1981:
Cor-po-ra-tion 1: a.) a group of merchants or traders united in a trade guild b.) the municipal authorities of a town or city 2: a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession 3: an association of employers and employees in a basic industry or of members of a profession organized as an organ of political representation in a corporative state.
‘The World Book Encyclopedia,’ Copyright 1976:
CORPORATION is an organization that can own property and make contracts as if it were a person. The property and contracts belong to the organization, not to the individuals who form it. Those who invest in a corporation have limit liability. If the corporation fails, they can lose no more than their investment, because the corporations debts are not their debts.
‘Thorndike Barnhart Unabridged Dictionary,’ Copyright 1963:
Cor-po-ra-tion 1: a group of persons who obtain a charter giving them as a group certain legal rights and privileges. A corporation can buy and sell, own property, manufacture and ship products, and bring lawsuits, as if its members were a single person. Abbr: Corp. 2: a group of persons with authority to act as a single person. The governing body of a college and the mayor and alderman of a city are corporations. 3: a corporate body in corporative state, composed of members representing employers and employees, that regiments specific activities in a given economic sphere.
Please note the copy right dates on the material I have referenced. I use and trust the books I was educated with, because I fear the modern socialist revisions of history and even the meaning of words. I have encountered the twisting of facts, to suit the Marxist progressive agenda, too many times not to question the modern perspective.
The concept of the corporation goes as far back as the Roman Empire and the more modern version of a stock or shareholder corporation came into being in about the fourteen hundreds in Holland. Before the legal acceptance of a corporation as an equal to a person with the rights and responsibilities of a person, anyone who owned even the smallest part of a business was held responsible for all the actions and debts of that business.
This feudal arrangement of responsibility was great for the King and the very wealthy aristocracy. It gave them more legal power to collect a debt and more important, to them, it prevented the common people from accumulating wealth. This feudal system, in fact was bad for everyone. It stifled world exploration, it stifled advancements in medicine, in agriculture, in business, and in the life span and standard of living in everyone.
The corporation is one of the greatest advancements man has made in the pursuit of freedom and a better life for himself and future generations. It must be ranked with man’s highest achievements, from the Magna Carta to the United States Constitution with the Bill Of Rights, as a true foundation stone of civilization.
Viewed in this light we realize that without the legal concept of the corporation the free market economic system we live in can not function and the freedoms we hold dear are in jeopardy. When our free enterprise system is destroyed all our personal freedoms go with it. We are then left to be ruled, as promised by Karl Marx, by a dictatorship of the proletariat in the perfect socialist utopian world.
But after generations of poor or false education concerning our history, starting with preschool and continuing through the Ph D level, what do we expect. With the anti-capitalist propaganda interwoven with the news and entertainment of each day we are being softly brainwashed. We now have what may be a majority of our citizens believing corporations, all private business and even capitalism itself is naturally evil. They are programed to think to make a honest profit is greed and to improve your own and your families standard of living is somehow wrong. They are programed to be socialist.
