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A few weeks ago, Tim Carney wrote a piece in the Washington Examiner that is stuck in my mind. The piece titled Conservatives, big government and the duty to care for the poor discusses what Carney sees as a shift in the rhetoric conservatives are using in reference to the poor and other vulnerable populations.  Carney notes that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently referenced a “shared responsibility for the weak.”  Carney continues:

Step away from policy debates and think about that phrase. Do you have a responsibility to help the weak? Do you have a responsibility to feed the hungry? To aid the poor?

 I think I do. I think everyone does. The Catholic Church teaches us we do.

Conservatives sometimes shy away from this idea, though. One reason is a strong (and overblown) distaste to “helping the lazy.” Another reason is that conservatives fear it implies the Left’s answer: big federal programs.

But, in fact, you can grant that you have a duty to the poor and the weak, and then have a really good debate:

Is that duty individual, or some sort of a communal duty?

Does the government have the legitimate right to transfer wealth to satisfy

…

They really don’t. 

To be clear, this is not a post bashing corporations (or government). It’s not really extolling the virtues of corporations, either. Instead, it’s just to make the point that, notwithstanding Citizens United or Hobby Lobby and other cases of their ilk, the idea that corporations are people is still a legal fiction.  A useful and important one, but a fiction nonetheless.  

On April 11, Corey Booker posted the following on Facebook:

In awful years past, corporations polluted the Passaic river to the point that it ended the days where people could eat from it, swim in it, and use it as a thriving recreation source. Today we announced a massive initiative to clean the Passaic river and bring it back to life again. The tremendous clean up effort will create hundreds of jobs and slowly over time restore one of New Jersey’s great rivers to its past strength and glory.

The river needs the clean-up, and I applaud the effort. Still, the reality is corporations did not pollute the Passaic River, at least not literally.  People working for the corporation did. It is agency law that allows a corporation to act in the first place, because the…