People join together into organizations so that they can pool resources. Explicitly exempting organizations from first amendment protections makes it easy for the government to side-step that and chill individual rights in the process.
Say the Jeb Bush administration comes along and makes it illegal for corporations to publish documentaries on environmental issues. The individuals at say the Sierra Club can still publish their own documentaries, but their ability to pool resources is gutted. They can't raise donations and store them in the corporation, because the corporation can't then use those funds to make environmental documentaries.
It's not a matter of "corporations having rights." It's a matter of allowing individuals to exercise their rights in organized groups that allow them to have more impact.
I didn't ask why we found it politically expedient to do this or that, I asked why the original poster thought rights for corporations was a fundamentally good idea.
"Because they balance various risks" (as I read your post) may be an accurate description of the world, but isn't an answer for why we don't change it.
Most everyone would agree Sturgeon was right, and doubly so about code - and the legal system is a huge pile of politically motivated spaghetti code written over centuries by people who didn't try to get a big picture. We need to decide what parts of our laws capture and define our image of ourselves and what parts are garbage.
So rather than create rights for money to prevent DEA seizures or enacting rights for corporations, recognize instead the point of a limited government. Everything that is not expressly forbidden is allowed. We can't fix our current government into that with more laws.
Say the Jeb Bush administration comes along and makes it illegal for corporations to publish documentaries on environmental issues. The individuals at say the Sierra Club can still publish their own documentaries, but their ability to pool resources is gutted. They can't raise donations and store them in the corporation, because the corporation can't then use those funds to make environmental documentaries.
It's not a matter of "corporations having rights." It's a matter of allowing individuals to exercise their rights in organized groups that allow them to have more impact.