Guess what? Corporations have first amendment rights, just like regular people. And Republicans across the land offered up a mighty chorus of “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” when the Supreme Court righted decades of discrimination by recognizing — and protecting — the essential people-ness of our corporate citizens.

Now, at long last, corporations will enjoy a level playing field with you and I when it comes to spending billions of dollars to express ourselves freely on the subject of who should be our judges and legislators and presidents.

However, this new revolution cannot end right here. If our corporate citizens enjoy first amendment rights, any bozo can see that they should enjoy, for example, second amendment rights, as well. After all, in the course of corporate events, it may become necessary at any time for any corporation to bear arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.

We are, of course, not just talking just about the ability to hire armies of armed security guards, or handing over corporate security to Blackwater. Private citizens can apply for gun licenses, they can stockpile arms and ammunition in order to protect their lives and property. Why, pray, should corporate citizens be deprived the same basic right? Why shouldn’t Exxon-Mobil be able to obtain a gun license? Why shouldn’t Goldman-Sachs have a corporate armory? Are corporate lives worthless? If you cut them, do they not bleed red ink? If they suffer fatal injuries to their profits, do they not die? (If a 911 call to Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner results in a miraculous complete recovery which doesn’t even leave any visible scars, that’s just the exception which proves the rule.)

Then, there’s the infamy of our corporate citizens suffering taxation without representation. We all know how reprehensible that is (unless we’re talking of the citizens of Washington, D.C., when it is proper and fitting that they be denied the representation the rest of the country enjoys, because to grant them one lousy Representative in the House would upset the delicate balance between Democrats and Republicans in the House, by creating one more safe Democratic seat).

Surely, no one is going to be so willing to wear their prejudices on their sleeve as to argue that a corporate citizen that pays millions of times the tax that the average human citizen pays should get just one lousy vote? We have to recognize that any sensible interpretation of the principle of equal representation requires that those who suffer greater taxation be afforded greater representation.

So, yes, what the Supreme Court did yesterday deserves to be be celebrated far and wide. But it is only the first real step in a long and painful journey. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a dream. And they will never flag in their tireless struggle for the basic rights that the rest of us take for granted until victory is theirs, and they achieve complete equality for corporate citizens of the United States.