Every once in a while a judge attends to the Constitution, and freedom lovers cheer wildly as if this were very strange, even wondrous. I guess it is, considered in light of the sweep of human history.
Should the Democrats’ “health care reform” package kick in fully, it would compel people to purchase medical insurance by punishing abstainers with a steep, extra tax. So hurray for Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond, according to whose recent decision the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to point a gun to our heads and force us to buy health insurance.
If the Constitution could be honestly read that way, it would mean that the Founding Fathers had fought to replace British tyranny with an even worse home-grown one. But no, no Founder thought that giving the federal government power to smooth trade relations among the states equaled authorization for universal, compulsory purchase of books, booze, bobby pins — or whatever Congress-Approved “health care” delivery system some future central planners might concoct. Nor does it.
We’re not out of danger yet, obviously. There are many more battles to come, many other provisions of “Obamacare” that have yet to be challenged and quashed in courts or in Congress. But in any tough job, you need to accomplish the first step.
Judge Hudson’s common-sense conclusion sounds like a great first step to me.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Commerce, Compulsion and the Constitution”
The elegant simplicity of our Constitution is too elegant and simple for our current “leaders” to comprehend. Because of the rampant mediocrity of these people and their mediocre expectations, the cannot grasp what superior people our founding father’s were. They had superior expectations for this country and its people. Now, we are stuck with the mediocre expectations of these “leaders” who, in their quest for power, have been doing their best to tamp down our exceptionalism. We are at a tipping point, and we, the exceptional will not be “tamped down” much longer. They are asking for a socialist or communist revolution (I believe it is being written in their 2,000 page bills), I think they may get something “exceptional”.
If they can force you to buy insurance, then they can force you to buy anything, and everything. For the “good” of the country. Or to preserve the union bosses’ contract. Or to keep the factory workers employed at twice prevailing wages.
“Don’t you want to serve?” was the query posed to everyone during the Chinese cultural revolution, where the Maoists seized and nationalized everything. Ostensibly the owners voluntarily contributed all their possessions for the “good” of the country. The alternative being an arrest and a year or two in a re-education prison. So much nicer to just tolerate having a couple of families moving into your home with you.
So nothing would then prevent the government from deciding that everyone will purchase a new car, say, every 4 years, or every 3 years, or every 2 years, whether they want one or not. And it would have to be from an approved vendor, that the government still owned a stake in. And since the government was so fixated on the new CAFE standards, it would also have to contribute to the every unrealisitically increasing mileage requirements. So your new required car wouldn’t be able to carry 4 people. It would carry 3 only, or 2, and they would have to be close friends, because the new tinfoil econobox would have you sitting so close together. And it would not need to have space for any luggage except for 2 bags of groceries. And it would have a range of 100 miles and not tolerate any collision more than 5 mph without near certain fatalities for all on board, because the hydrogen hybrid on board would explode. And it would cost 40,000 dollars, of which folks making less than a certain amount would get free, so that they wouldn’ be discriminated against just for not having jobs.
So line up, to sign up, or don’t. Because they’ll deduct it from your income anyway, since it’s a mandated purchase that they are calling a tax.
The government wouldn’t do that. They would NEVER make us buy something that we didn’t want. That would be unConstitutional.
Exactly.
Except, as in OBOMINATION CARE – MUSLIMS AND THE AMISH will be excluded.