A Conversation With John Ehrett (Part 2 of 2)

During a panel discussion about the strained and deteriorating relationship between conservatism and corporations at the National Conservatism conference last July in Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill staff attorney and writer John Ehrett spoke about “The Myth of Citizens United.”

“It’s a familiar myth, one we’ve all heard—the myth of the business corporation as autonomous, natural, organic—something set over against the oppressive power of the state,” according to Ehrett, in an essay adapted from his remarks published by The James Wilson Institute’s Anchoring Truths.

It’s the myth of the private sector versus the public sector. It’s the myth that the modern market economy is more basic, more primordial, than governance itself. On this view, government is the bad guy, a bull in a china shop. And it’s this myth that lies at the root of contemporary conservatism’s disordered relationship to corporate power.

(Emphases in original; endnote omitted.)

Given our interest in the relationship between private philanthropy and the state, Ehrett’s thinking and the ramifications of it in that context caught our attention. He was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation earlier this month.

During the first part of our discussion, which is here, we talk about the myth, its historically anachronistic basis, and its ramifications in the context of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. The just less than 10-and-a-half-minute video below is the second part, in which we discuss natural and constitutional rights in general; those conditions that can or could legally attach to governmental benefits, including tax-exemption, in particular; and first principles and the common good.

“We have a natural right to act with charity, but do we have a natural right to tax exemption? Absolutely not,” Ehrett tells me. There are “two different levels of discourse,” one of “which is what we are as human beings and our natural rights” and the other one of which is those rights “that are very clearly established by the law and conditioned and bounded by certain requirements.”

In nonprofit tax law, “we have these categories of exemptions because we recognize that charitable giving … serves the public good, so if our philanthropic system is not achieving that, then it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about reforming it, I think,” he says later.

While “much of the advocacy that comes out of a lot of the progressive philanthropic organizations is overwhelmingly dominated towards pushing the Democratic Party as a party in a particular direction” and “you can reasonably ask the question, Is this is actually just partisan political activity here?,” Ehrett acknowledges, he says what he’s concerned about “is getting the principle right here, and I think the principle is that these things are downstream of democratic choices that were made to serve the common good. Whether or not that advantages or disadvantages some political party in terms of getting the question right isn’t the paramount question.”

Finally, he notes a parallel between reactions against Big Philanthropy and Big Tech. “This kind of comes up every time we talk about reforming Section 230,” with its statutory protection of tech companies from claims of liability, he says. “The tech companies act, and litigate, in ways that basically imply that they have this kind of natural right to select a liability shield—which is crazy, because Congress created this liability shield.

“I think having these conversations is really important,” Ehrett concludes, “because this is about how we shape the law going forward, and from first principles.”

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This article first appeared in the Giving Review on October 22, 2024.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/a-conversation-with-john-ehrett-part-2-of-2/