shudder This is the closest I've come to identifying with the Mitt Romney quote "Corporations are people, my friend." I recognize corporations are a collective entity comprised of people and people have free speech rights. I'm trying to figure out for myself where the boundaries of those rights are, since a collective naturally has more power to impact others than an individual, simply because it takes less individual energy for a collective action than it does for an individual action of the same magnitude.
I have to meditate on this. Anyone have thoughts to share on this to help me find clarity?
Well, it depends on how you think rights should be granted. I personally don't agree with how rights is handled in a lot of cases, giving a sufficiently powerful entity freedom is equivalent to taking away freedom from every other lesser entity it happens to dislike.
Only an entity with greater authority than yourself can grant you any rights, so what happens when it reaches the point where a company is as influential as a small government? A national government?
Consider what you're saying and why a position against corporate speech rights may not be really what you're against. If you come into this with an assumption about what "those greedy, self-serving corporations" might use such rights to say, but second guess it when a corporation agrees with your position: aren't you really saying that it's not the idea of corporate speech rights that you care about, but only what they might say with those rights? If it is corporate speech rights that you care about, the content shouldn't matter at all.
I'm on the opposite side as you. Corporations are merely associations of people (shareholders) working in common cause. Sure that cause is usually profit, but it doesn't have to be only that. Just as a political party is an association of people, or a non-profit organization is an association of people, I firmly hold people can come together in common cause be that for profit or societal action.
Consider Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and their current push against the sitting president: https://www.benjerry.com/flavors/pecan-resist-ice-cream. Should Ben & Jerry's be allowed to participate in this distinctly political discussion and during an election cycle? I would say yes. Ben & Jerry's does not support my ideology at all (OK, I'm not actually a Trump supporter or even a "conservative", so I don't have a horse in the "Resist" race, but that's besides the point). And that's even with them being foreign owned (relative to the U.S.) I disagree with the ISP's politics... but believe that those people that are making these decisions should have the right to use their company's resources in support of their beliefs.
You need to clarify whether you stand for principle or whether you are on a team. If principle, then it seems like the ISP's actions are not in line with your principles. If you're just on a team... we'll OK... then I guess it doesn't really matter, does it. :-)
