I was interested to read this cite in a report on a situation in which someone accused a corporation of illegal activity:
In Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749 (1985) the Supreme Court allowed a business to sue a credit reporting agency for defamation where the agency mistakenly reported that the business had filed for bankruptcy.
Restatement Second § 561 Defamation of Corporations states:
“One who publishes defamatory matter concerning a corporation is subject to liability to it
(a) if the corporation is one for profit, and the matter tends to prejudice it in the conduct of its business or to deter others from dealing with it, or
(b) if, although not for profit, it depends upon financial support from the public, and the matter tends to interfere with its activities by prejudicing it in public estimation.”
Did you know that "Defamation of Corporations" was an actionable grounds for a lawsuit? And it says "One who publishes". Does that include newspapers, websites, blogs and the like? How about Facebook Feeds? Fact is, it is very hard for private citizens to sue for defamation. Most of us don't have the resources. Big corporations do, so citizen journalists might be deterred from reporting something even if there is reason to think it is true simply because they can be sued for defamation by an artificial government-created entity called a corporation.
But it goes beyond that. Look at the wording of those statements. We bad-mouth various members of our society, members of other tribes and political clubs and what have you, all the time, in a way that would "interfere" in their activities by "prejudicing it in public estimation." It is hard to avoid the conclusion that on this issue, courts have manufactured the "right" to sue for artificial government-created entities called corporations that is at least equal to your right and mine to do so, but they have much more resources with which to exercise their right! So smart people would be much more reticent to publish derogatory information about them rather than us!
In Localism, a philosophy of government there are thirteen doorways to centralization which must be kept shut in order to maintain a decentralized society. If any of them is left open, you will wind up with an increasingly centralized state regardless of the preferences of the people when the door is first opened. One of these is abuse of incorporation. We can't have a decentralized government when global corporations are free to buy, sell, lobby, and give to PACS without limitation. They are going to push for centralization every time and for us to be free (which requires political decentralization) they must be bound.
In 1787, the newly freed states of the American Confederation had a debate on whether they should adopt the proposed constitution which would make them truly one, albeit federal, nation. James Madison, soon to be our nation's second President and leading proponent of the Federalist side, "sold" the public on the idea of adopting the constitution. He did this by making the now-famous claim that under the proposed constitution the powers delegated to the federal government were "few and defined" while those powers "left to the states" were "numerous and indefinite."
I ask you citizens, is this the kind of government we have? The truth is that each generation of Americans are living under a "federal" government that is more centralized than the last, regardless of how they voted. The national capital has, like dung draws flies, drawn to itself from all corners of our vast nation those with aberrant personalities who have a perverse compulsion to rule over others combined with a maniacal sense of self-worth which enables and justifies their sense of entitlement to do so. This is why the great author J.R.R. Tolkien said that he was increasingly drawn to anarchy. He said that not one man in a thousand was fit to exercise authority over others for any great length of time, least of all, those who desire to do so. His opus, The Lord of the Rings, explores the corrupting effects of unholy power.
Put enough of such defective persons in an echo-chamber of a national capital and there can be no doubt that they will work together tirelessly to draw all power to the Imperial Center, leaving citizens in the heartland less and less control over their own affairs. This pathology has long advanced and has now brought our Republic to its death-bed.
Four years ago when Donald Trump won the election, the coastal elites were shocked. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about how all the Silicon Valley tech kings noticed that they had more in common with their peers in China and India than they did with famers in California's central valley. They started questioning if it wasn't better if the rules were made in a decentralized manner as I reported here. IOW they "discovered" the principle of localism.
I hope they haven't forgotten it just because the gun is now being held by what they perceive as a member of their own "tribe". When Barack Obama won, he said "elections have consequences" and acted accordingly. Not everyone on the right accepted his election, but the left expected them to. When Donald Trump was elected president, the left went berserk and spent the last four years refusing to accept the results. Now the left has won, and they are back to calling for "unity". I expect the right to see through the extreme insincerity and gross hypocrisy of these calls, but even if they weren't making them, I expect many on the right to think the election results are illegitimate. What if both sides are right?
When all the rules are made in the Imperial Center, it is catastrophic for the losing side. In such an arrangement it isn't reasonable for almost half the population, or even one-tenth of the population for that matter, to just shrug it off and accept the election results as "legitimate" and binding on them when so much power is held by a coalition so adverse to their interests. Making the central government so powerful raises the stakes until one tribe or both starts cheating to win, further reducing the legitimacy of the process.
When the central government only made a few rules, mostly related to foreign policy, people could accept the results when they lost. Now, with FEDGOV attempting to control, manage, regulate, and direct almost every aspect of our lives, they can't, and it is understandable why. Why should they lose their way of life just because the "other" side was able to cobble together a narrow victory, and that possibly by fraudulent means? Each side issues a hollow call for "unity" after they win, even while they immediately compile enemies lists and pay off their coalitions from the Treasury. Each side refuses to accept the results when they lose, because those results are so catastrophic.
Democracy has been described as "three wolves and a sheep voting over what's for dinner." This quip highlights the fact that majority rule isn't the same as legitimate rule. Particularly when the issue at question is a matter of individual rights, but the point also applies when the questions being voted on become too over-arching. In a nation of 150 million voters, eighty million voting that the other seventy million have to give half of their income to the "winners" and order their lives how the "winners" think they should, even with regards to how they are allowed to breathe, simply isn't "legitimate". Democracy becomes a whole pasture of sheep voting on what's for dinner, only to learn that wolves and townspeople from distant lands have outvoted them.
The more distant the democracy, the shorter it's legitimate reach should be. If I live in a state or a city of ten million people who overwhelmingly feel an issue should be handled one way, the fact that overall vote went slightly in favor of a candidate who wants to do it another way isn't going to be accepted as the final word. It is more natural to look to how the people who live around you feel about an issue rather than distant strangers who know little about your life or perspectives and care less. Over-centralization of government power leads to a loss of legitimacy. You can blame the people, left or right, all you want, but you won't change the natural order, the moral order of the universe, by doing so.
The only lasting solution is for the promises the federalists made when our Constitution was enacted to be kept by our federal government today. We have to decentralize. We have to learn to be able to sleep well at night even though people we have never met living in a city we have never been to are doing things that we, or our would-be Imperial Overlords and their media, disapprove of. In other, words, we need to behave as if we are mentally healthy instead of mentally ill. It is downright crazy to think that we can see a "news" report on TV and think we know better how a situation should be handled than the people who live there. Will those people make mistakes? Of course, and so does Washington. But those mistakes are both easier to correct and easier to escape from when made on the local, rather than the national, level.
