I still do not understand how a corporation can have person-hood if it has no soul and never dies.
Interpretation
The quote questions the concept of corporate personhood, highlighting the contradiction of treating corporations as individuals without human qualities.
Jon Stewart's quote critiques the idea that corporations can possess rights and responsibilities like individuals, despite lacking essential human attributes such as a soul or the ability to die. This reflects a deeper philosophical inquiry into the nature of personhood and the implications of granting legal status to entities that do not have the moral and ethical qualities associated with being human.
In practice
In a speech about corporate ethics, one might quote Jon Stewart's perspective on corporate personhood.
President Bush announced his new economic plan. The centerpiece was a proposed repeal of the dividend tax on stocks, a boon that could be worth millions of dollars to average Americans. Well, average stock-owning Americans. Technically, Americans who own a significant amount of shares in dividend-dealing companies. Well, rich people, that's what I'm trying to say. They're going to do really well with this.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I figured this out. I know what's wrong with what we've done in Iraq. We've been following time as it goes forward. What a classic mistake. Linear time is so pre-9-11.
You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.
If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies.
Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot." [Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]
A guy comes down to earth, takes your sins, dies, and comes back three days later. You believe in him and go to heaven forever. How do you get from that to Hide-The-Eggs? Did Jesus have a problem with eggs? Did he go, "When I come back, if I see any eggs, the whole salvation thing is off."
The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.
Luxury lies not in the richness of things, but in the absence of vulgarity
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.
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