Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010) 85 Opinion of STEVENS, J. outlet exactly the same as General Motors.75 This calls to mind George Berkeley’s description of philosophers: “[W]e have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.” Principles of Human Knowledge/Three Dialogues 38, ¶3 (R. Woolhouse ed. 1988). It would be perfectly understandable if our colleagues feared that a campaign finance regulation such as §203 may be counterproductive or self-interested, and therefore attended carefully to the choices the Legislature has made. But the majority does not bother to consider such practical matters, or even to consult a record; it simply stipulates that “enlightened self-government” can arise only in the absence of regulation. Ante, at 23. In light of the distinctive features of corporations identified in Aus tin, there is no valid basis for this assumption. The mar­ ketplace of ideas is not actually a place where items—or laws—are meant to be bought and sold, and when we move from the realm of economics to the realm of corpo­ rate electioneering, there may be no “reason to think the market ordering is intrinsically good at all,” Strauss 1386. The Court’s blinkered and aphoristic approach to the First Amendment may well promote corporate power at the cost of the individual and collective self-expression the Amendment was meant to serve. It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process. Americans may be forgiven if they do not feel the Court has advanced —————— 75 Under the majority’s view, the legislature is thus damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. If the legislature gives media corporations an exemption from electioneering regulations that apply to other corpora­ tions, it violates the newly minted First Amendment rule against identity-based distinctions. If the legislature does not give media corporations an exemption, it violates the First Amendment rights of the press. The only way out of this invented bind: no regulations whatsoever.