[anigbrowl]

That's a kind of arbitrary approach. Individuals have unlimited freedom of speech, why shouldn't groups of individuals exercise that same right? I'm rather less rah-rah on the first amendment than most, and would far rather have publicly financed elections, but I can't really see a philosophical problem with Citizens United. Unions (which are specialized corporations) would not take kindly to restriction of their free speech, and CU benefited them as much as any other corporate speaker.

[thwest]

I want democracy to be about human to human negotiation. I don't want the basic unit of our society to be as abstract as one that would include corporations and unions (and computer programs? and other, smaller governments?). Corporations and unions exist to further human endeavors. To the extent that they aid individual humans, those humans will voice their support for higher-order structures. The higher-order structures should always be responsible to the entire field of individuals, and never granted moral status of their own.

[anigbrowl]

Unfortunately, other people want different things. Human to human negotiation gets tricky in larger populations; it's no accident that the American political landscape rapidly became dominated by parties despite the founders' ideals; if a group of people choose to delegate some of their moral authority to an entity like a party or a corporation, it's rather hard to articulate why they should not be able to do so. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.