Well, it’s been 11 days since I’ve submitted it to the local newspaper and it hasn’t appeared in print, so I’m going to assume that it will never appear.

It’s funny that for 15 years of my life I couldn’t get a letter printed in the local paper because I worked for the paper, now that I’m free to write, I still can’t get it printed.

Here’s the letter, in response to this one I mentioned earlier this month.

The hysteria from many on the left regarding the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC as epitomized in student Adrienne Dickinson’s letter (2/3/2010) is unwarranted, overwrought and misplaced.

The idea that allowing corporations to speak out on political issues is the beginning of the end of our democracy is laughable. Long before last month’s ruling, there were 28 states that allowed corporations to directly fund political speech in state and local elections – including California and the president’s own home state of Illinois. Have we not had democracy in California?

The idea that this will result in a vast influx of corporate spending is also likely false. Most large, public corporations have no interest in taking a political stance that will alienate 50 percent of their customer base. It’s just not good business.

The idea that the American electorate is just a bunch of mindless automatons that can be directed to vote a certain way by some slick corporate marketing campaign is ridiculous. If that were true, we’d all be drinking New Coke. (Ms. Dickinson can ask her parents to tell her about that marketing disaster.)

Which is more undemocratic? Billionaires like George Soros and Rupert Murdoch spending untold amounts of money to air their political views? Or a  group of like-minded people – who individually make less in a year than Soros and Murdoch make in a day – coming together to pool their money to spread their political views under a corporate structure? Until last month’s ruling, the former was perfectly legal, the latter was not.

It is the American body politic that will benefit now that “corporations” like the Sierra Club, National Rifle Association, the Nature Conservancy and Citizens United – associations of concerned and like-minded people – can freely voice their opinions on the issues facing this nation.

That’s democracy. That’s the freedom of speech that’s guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The answer to speech you don’t like isn’t less speech; it’s more speech.

This isn’t the end of our American democracy – it’s a new start.

Matthew Hoy

San Luis Obispo