Over the years I’ve grown to share very little common ground with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, so I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to read his views regarding the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday declaring “unconstitutional (on First Amendment grounds) campaign finance regulations which restrict the ability of corporations and unions to use funds from their general treasury for ‘electioneering’ purposes.”

Take it away, Glenn:

The First Amendment is not and never has been outcome-dependent; the Government is barred from restricting speech—especially political speech—no matter the good results that would result from the restrictions. That’s the price we pay for having the liberty of free speech. . . .

I’m also quite skeptical of the apocalyptic claims about how this decision will radically transform and subvert our democracy by empowering corporate control over the political process. . . . The reality is that our political institutions are already completely beholden to and controlled by large corporate interests. . . . All of the hand-wringing sounds to me like someone expressing serious worry that a new law in North Korea will make the country more tyrannical. There’s not much room for our corporatist political system to get more corporatist. Does anyone believe that the ability of corporations to influence our political process was meaningfully limited before yesterday’s issuance of this ruling?

Indeed, the gnashing of teeth over the coming corpocalypse (corporatacalypse???) seemed a little naïve. My yanqui friends, the USA’s always been a corporatocracy.

When it comes to the First Amendment, however, I don’t think there can be any wiggle room.

Free speech can survive without democracy; democracy cannot survive without free speech.