How dare the court overturn a hundred years of law, say the supporters of ‘Pitchfork Ben’

I don’t know how many times now I’ve read someone — while bemoaning the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling overturning the ban on political speech by corporations — complain that the court had overturned 100 years of American law and turned back the hands of time to the age of the Robber Barons.

Yes, the court overturned the Tillman Act of 1907. It was an act intended to wrest power from those evil corporations that would corrupt the minds of voters with their greed and self-interest.

This was the lede on The New York Times editorial on this topic on Jan. 21: “With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.”

In his dissent in the case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Justice John Paul Stevens even quoted Republican President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1905 State of the Union speech in which he declared: “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders’ money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.”

But the name on the act is Tillman, Democratic Sen. Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman of South Carolina that is, the leader of those KKK-style “Red Shirts,” the man who declared, "The negro must remain subordinated or be exterminated" in order to "keep the white race at the top of the heap."

This was the man who feared the rise of black laborers and Northern corporate interests.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in remarks delivered during a speech at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., brought this up.

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas was quoted as saying by the NY Times. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

Thomas said it would be wrong to applaud such rationale as “some sort of beatific action.”

It always seems to get back to the content of the speech that is being banned. It is not the corrupting influence of big money. It is not some noble stand for the sake of one man, one vote. It is always: I don’t want you to hear something with which I disagree.

Tillman wrote two years before his death, "I have come to doubt that the masses of the people have sense enough to govern themselves." 

Now there is a champion of democracy President Obama, who lamented the court ruling in his State of the Union speech, can be proud of.