Sunday, October 13, 2013

Other Brief Reflections on the Obamacare Mandate and the Future of Liberty

Isn't it odd that some lefty pundits say that chief Justice John Roberts “saved” the reputation of the Supreme Court by voting with the lockstep-left justices, but they see this decision, a decision that threatens to destroy whatever remained of the liberties that our founders fought and suffered to hand down to their descendants, as being perfectly legitimate even though the deciding vote was cast by the very same Elena Kagan who developed the strategy used in the oral (and most likely written) arguments? How can that be legitimate?



If (God forbid) the court goes on to have a 5-4 liberal majority in the future, and starts tearing down our heritage of liberty and the rights of the individual, do you suppose that the same pundits who today say that every 5-4 decision in which the lockstep-lefties are in the minority is a the decision of a bitterly partisan majority will accuse the Gang of Five of the future of being equally partisan, or indeed partisan at all?

This, of course, is a rhetorical question.



Contrary to what's being published now, I believe this dreadful decision will at last put an end to the naïve belief that the Supreme Court and the judicial branch in general will protect our rights for us, and that therefore we do not have to protect them ourselves. This belief should have died with the decision of the court on the McCain-Feingold free campaign speech strangulation law, when the majority of the justices sided with the politicians against the people. Funny – when I was young (admittedly a long time ago), we were taught that liberals believed in expanding free speech. This concept died sometime in the 1990s, as uber-liberal Alan Dershowitz noted when he wrote “In today's America, the greatest threat to free speech is not coming from the Right. It's coming from the Left.”

Give up that fantasy, lovers of liberty. No-one is going to defend the freedoms we have left for us. If we're going to reclaim our rights, or even defend the ones we still have, we are going to have to fight for them ourselves.



The liberal fascists (not an oxymoron – read Jonah Goldberg's book of the same name) must be giddy with this decision. At the beginning of this noble experiment in self-government, the federal government largely left its citizens alone entirely. As the decades went by, the reach of the national government waxed and waned, but didn't immediately grow into a leviathan. Libertarian legend says that Abraham Lincoln was the father of big government, but this is twaddle, as by 1872 (only seven years after the shooting stopped) the federal government had shrunk back to its pre-war size.

As America was drawn into World War I, liberal icon Woodrow Wilson began to expand the powers of the government at the expense of liberty. Censorship grew, and this time the controls on behavior did not all come off at the end of the war. It's a pleasing irony to think that Eugene V. Debs, repeat socialist Party candidate for President, jailed for interfering with the draft and the recruitment for the Armed Forces (jailed for making a speech!), was not released by Wilson, either at the end of the war or even at the end of his term. He would have to wait to be released by that supposed disaster of a Republican President, Warren G. Harding, who answered objections to Debs' release on Christmas Eve of 1921 by saying “I want him to eat Christmas dinner with his family.” Typically, the socialists who edit Wikipedia do not give Harding credit for his rather touching statement. They also do not give Harding credit for actually inviting Debs to the White House the moment he was released from prison, an invitation that Debs accepted. After meeting with Harding, Debs pronounced Harding a kindly gentleman.

Take note, liberals. Liberal icon jails citizen for exercising free speech, and conservative Republican releases him.

As the decades went by, the number of actions that became crimes grew exponentially. After this, in a trend that many of us find appalling, the concept of “hate crimes” appeared. Now not only were our actions suspect, but our motives and thoughts as well. Many, including this writer, found the new trend in law disturbing, for it has long been a tenant of American jurisprudence that it was the act which was the crime, not the motive. By “hate crime” logic, it can be more of an offense (leading to greater punishment) to assault a 24 year old homosexual bodybuilder that to assault an 82 year old asthmatic grandfather. Anyone who doesn't see this as a howling idiocy is an idiot themselves.

Not satisfied with the partial subjugation of the American citizenry, we now have the real purpose of the Obamacare law, and its true purpose. Having already criminalized (and thus controlled) our actions, our thoughts, and our motives, they now move to control our inactions as well. Don't buy a product our self-proclaimed rulers demand that we purchase, and pay a fine or go to jail. Presumably, if you resist like free people often do, and you will be shot. Once they establish that principle, freedom in this country is over. Perhaps forever.

The leftists will be in La-La-Lenin Land, though. Their dreams will have have come full circle – as a noose around our necks.

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