politics

1/3 A  Farcaster Exclusive

The Constitutional Imperative: Why Americans Must Reclaim Their Democratic Birthright

Corporate money has systematically captured American governance because citizens have abdicated their constitutional duty to participate in the political system. To restore constitutional democracy, Americans must mobilise en masse to vote out establishment politicians and reclaim their role as sovereign participants in governance.

The American Constitution was never designed as a machine that would go of itself, as scholar James Russell Lowell observed in the 19th century. Yet this fundamental misunderstanding has allowed a profound betrayal of the constitutional order to unfold over decades, whereby corporate interests have systematically captured the levers of government whilst citizens retreat from their sacred obligations of democratic participation. What we witness today is not merely political dysfunction but a constitutional crisis of the highest order, one that threatens the very foundation of American self-governance.

The crisis facing American democracy today transcends partisan politics or policy disagreements. It represents a fundamental violation of the constitutional compact between citizens and their government. When the Founding Fathers crafted the phrase “We the People” in the Constitution’s preamble, they established a clear and unambiguous principle: sovereignty resides with the citizenry, not with corporate entities, special interests, or political establishments. This foundational truth has been systematically eroded by a twin assault of unlimited corporate money and widespread citizen apathy, creating a governance system that serves concentrated wealth rather than the public interest.

The result is a democracy in name only, a system where elected officials spend more time courting mega-donors than listening to constituents, where policy outcomes reflect corporate preferences rather than popular will, and where ordinary Americans increasingly feel disenfranchised from their own government. This is not the natural evolution of democratic governance but its perversion, enabled by citizens who have forgotten their constitutional obligations and surrendered their sovereign power to others.

The Corporate Capture of American Politics

The evidence for corporate dominance over American politics is overwhelming and undeniable. The landscape changed dramatically following the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which fundamentally altered the balance of political power by allowing unlimited corporate spending on elections. Today, thanks to this ruling and subsequent decisions, big money dominates political campaigns to a degree not seen since the Gilded Age robber barons purchased politicians wholesale.

The financial architecture of this capture is staggering in its scope and sophistication. Super PACs now allow billionaires and corporations to pour unlimited amounts into campaigns, systematically drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans. The 2010 Citizens United decision opened floodgates to independent spending that the Court’s majority naively assumed would remain transparent and separate from candidate campaigns. Both assumptions have proven catastrophically wrong.

The concentration of political influence among the ultra-wealthy has reached levels that would make the Founders recoil in horror. For example, in the 2022 midterm elections, just 21 of the biggest donor families contributed $783 million, a sum that eclipses the combined contributions of millions of small donors across the entire electoral cycle. Billionaires provided 15 percent of all federal election financing, with most of these funds flowing through super PACs that can raise unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations, and unions. These mega-donors easily outspent the total contributions from millions of small donors to House and Senate candidates, demonstrating how concentrated wealth has systematically overwhelmed grassroots democratic participation.

The corruption extends far beyond campaign contributions into a sophisticated web of influence-peddling that would have been recognisable to the corrupt political machines of the 19th century. Dark money groups, enabled by legal loopholes, can spend hundreds of millions on elections without revealing their funding sources. This allows corporations and foreign interests to influence American elections whilst maintaining plausible deniability. The very transparency that the Supreme Court assumed would accompany increased political spending has been systematically undermined through legal chicanery and regulatory capture.

Research demonstrates the direct correlation between financial contributions and political access. Studies show that politicians made themselves significantly more available for meetings with individuals when they believed those individuals had donated to their campaigns. Even more damning, analysis reveals that companies contributing more money to federal candidates subsequently received more government contracts, controlling for other factors. This represents textbook corruption, the use of public office for private gain, albeit dressed in the legal fiction of “free speech.”

The revolving door between corporate boardrooms and government offices has accelerated this capture. Former members of Congress routinely become lobbyists, leveraging their relationships and inside knowledge to secure favourable policies for corporate clients. Meanwhile, corporate executives move seamlessly into regulatory positions, where they oversee the very industries they previously represented. This intermingling of public and private interests has created a permanent political class whose loyalty lies with corporate sponsors rather than constitutional principles.

Public opinion surveys consistently reveal that Americans understand their democracy has been hijacked by monied interests. Eight-in-ten U.S. adults say people who donate money to political campaigns have too much influence on Congressional decisions. Seventy-three percent say lobbyists and special interest groups wield excessive influence over elected officials. Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike recognise this corporate dominance, yet the political system remains unresponsive to popular demands for reform.

The scope of corporate influence extends beyond federal elections into state and local politics, where money can purchase even greater leverage over policy outcomes. State legislators, often earning minimal salaries and lacking sophisticated staff support, prove particularly vulnerable to corporate influence campaigns. Local elections, with their typically low turnout and minimal media coverage, can be swayed by relatively modest corporate expenditures that nevertheless dwarf the resources available to citizen advocates.

The Constitutional Foundation for Citizen Participation

The Constitution establishes citizen participation not merely as a right to be exercised at will but as a fundamental obligation of democratic citizenship. This principle represents one of the most revolutionary aspects of the American founding, the idea that ordinary citizens bear direct responsibility for governing themselves rather than delegating that authority permanently to a ruling class.

The Founders understood that democracy requres active, informed citizen engagement to function as designed. Democracy requires not just obeying the law; it requires that people actively participate in the political process. This means voting, certainly, but extends far beyond the mere act of casting ballots. Citizens must stay informed about political affairs, make rational choices among competing candidates and policies, serve on juries when called, hold elected officials accountable between elections, and participate in the civic organisations that form the backbone of democratic society.

This understanding traces back to the ancient foundations of democratic thought, which the Founders studied extensively. The origin of citizenship can be traced back to Ancient Greece, where citizens were those who possessed both the legal right and moral obligation to participate in the affairs of the state. For those who held the privileged status of citizenship, the concept of civic virtue, being a good citizen, formed an integral part of the social contract. Participation was not considered merely a right but, first and foremost, a duty. Citizens who failed to meet their civic responsibilities were considered socially disruptive and threats to the democratic order.

The American constitutional system depends fundamentally upon this tradition of active citizen engagement. The Constitution’s framers designed a system of checks and balances that assumes informed citizen participation at every level. They undertood that concentrated power inevitably corrupts and that only vigilant citizen oversight could prevent the emergence of tyranny, whether by kings, aristocrats, or, as we see today, corporate oligarchs.

The constitutional text itself reflects this expectation of citizen involvement. The First Amendment protects not just individual expression but the collective right of citizens to petition the government for a redress of grievances language that presupposes active citizen engagement with political processes. The jury system, enshrined in multiple constitutional amendments, requires citizens to participate directly in the administration of justice. The electoral college system, whatever its flaws, assumes that citizens will choose electors who represent their interests rather than corporate preferences.

reading is good for you and being informed is good for your country