Shushing Big Money

Citizens deal a blow to 'corporate personhood'

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

June 22, 2006

In the old monarchies of Europe, the resident populace were known as subjects. Here in the New World, where mankind started over, we're citizens, a word that pulses with self-governing power.

This is pretty scary, and there's plenty of pressure on us not to take this role literally. Democracy is dangerous, after all. It's always a threat to those in power. This is why its expansion over the last 230 years — through abolitionism, trade unionism, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement — has never come without struggle and controversy. But where democracy is healthy, this is what citizens do: expand the terrain.