The federal government long ago expanded its powers far beyond anything James Madison and his fellow framers imagined. The Constitution is in reality meaningless, but the Supreme Court, whose purpose is to make sure our laws conform to the Constitution, twists its reasoning to justify interventionist laws as the mixed economy marches toward fascism.
Yesterday the court upheld Obamacare as a tax increase, and sure enough, Congress has the power to levy taxes. It’s right there in the Constitution; you can see for yourself.
You can’t expect the Supreme Court to save America from continuing down the road to serfdom. Not only is our culture moving that way, but the Court would have to rule against its own precedents such as Wickard v. Filburn, which stretched the Commerce Clause to cover any economic activity that affects interstate commerce. It would take five remarkable Justices to defy the rest of government, academia, the media and the nihilist postmodern philosophy or our culture — and apparently, the Court has only four such men.
The idea of being limited by the words of an 18th century document makes people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi laugh. To them providing for the general welfare means whatever the state thinks is good for you. And their intentions are good; all they want to do is give us all free health care. Any further argument is just politics and legalistic quibbling.
Do you think the word “fascism” is hyperbolic? The “tax” in Obamacare will be payments to health insurance companies. If fascism is the form of socialism in which private property is kept nominally in private ownership but dictated by the state, then Obamacare is something Mussolini would have loved.
I believe the Affordable Care Act has been deceptive from the beginning. The purpose of Obamacare is to create a mess. What will happen when insurance companies must cover people with pre-existing conditions? They will lose money, and then they will go to the government for subsidies in order to remain in business. Eventually, the statists will argue that health care would be cheaper to the taxpayers if the federal government eliminated the middle man and managed it on the European model. (Yes, that model that is now in economic crisis.)
I think they will succeed. If there is one thing I am confident our government can create, it’s a mess. You must remember, Obama does not work on the old model — that of getting practical results and spreading prosperity. He doesn’t care if his policies work. He only wants the strong to sacrifice to the weak and the individual to sacrifice to the collective. To leftists this is good and all else is evil, even if evil is more practical.
The Supreme Court cannot save freedom in America. Can anyone? Is there any hope? We need cultural change, which means the spread of reason, individualism and free market economics, which means the philosophy of Ayn Rand. A nation gets the government it deserves.
Education and healthcare is where it’s at for statism. Forget about cars and computers; let people keep the glass and steel of modern industrial civilization. Control the minds of children and the bodies of adults, and you’ll have them all in a vise. In other words, socialize people. In other words, fascism.
We definately live in interesting times.
The morality of altruism, human sacrifice, must be challenged. A civilized morality, a non-sacrificial way of life, a life where initiatory force is banned from human relationships, is alien to the minds of most people. That many in government and academia, can’t even think in these terms is why I’m pessimistic about America’s future in the short term. In the long term I’m optimistic but only if we have enough time for Objectivist principles to spread.
The key question for our generation is how to define a Welfare State that the majority believes is FAIR and SUSTAINABLE. How do we maintain a Welfare State that provides the necessities of life, including healthcare and education, that are necessary to insure equal pursuit of opportunity without bankrupting the country or imposing an unfair burden on the productive elements of society who pay the taxes that fund it?
Troll? Or Clueless?
sorry I should have clarified a bit further. apparently some libertarians, who call themselves bleeding heart libertarians, think you can fuse “social justice” issues with free market principles. I think it just attests to the futility of libertarianism as a whole but it is one of the solutions they are trying to offer. they don’t want to repudiate the welfare state all together so we find a point of compromise with leftists.
Sorry about that, I guess I missed the irony of the formulation and thought you were one of the aforementioned bleeps.
Another instance of an adjunct of Poe’s law.