And yes, Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore either. Instead, we are in a State of Shock and Disbelief. About a month before the Supreme Court's decision upholding the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a University of Texas Law Professor wrote an opinion piece recommending that the Court acknowledge the constitutional invalidity of the insurance mandate (which is codified in a separate provision of the law), but simultaneously uphold the penalty for an individual's failure to obtain said health care insurance. I recall laughing out loud upon first reading this erudite scholar's seriously advanced proposal. I then concluded that the Republic was indeed safe, for now, and possibly for the foreseeable future, as the liberal elite had finally shown itself to be totally intellectually dishonorable, openly ignoring any need to adhere to the Rule of Law. I thought how utterly cynical - a tenured professor at a well respected Law School argues that a federal law should be construed to impose no legal duty or mandate to do something, and yet should a person not undertake such a voluntary, non-lawfully required act, he or she will be made subject to a collection action by the IRS for thousands of dollars in penalties. In short, I knew that no right thinking, rational person could envision a society in which engaging in lawful conduct is made subject to mandatory federal sanctions - such cognitive dissonance would have been rejected by George Orwell as too implausible for his novel "1984".
Well, guess what Elite Members Oceania 2 Point O has arrived in the former federalist Republic of the United States. Chief Justice John Roberts, to all plausible accounts, literally sucker punched the conservative wing of the Court by changing his vote after the several Justice's opinions, 5-4 majority and dissenter's, had already been written finding the ACA unconstitutional in its entirety. Mr. Roberts, without even acknowledging or giving credit to the Texas law genius, initially struck down the insurance mandate because in our Constitutional Republic with only enumerated powers given to the federal government, the Commerce Clause does not, and cannot, reach individual inactivity. That initial conclusion by Roberts constitutes the very foundation and essence of America's unique system of government - were the national government to hold unfettered police powers to legislate the full panoply of duties of its citizenry under the guise of regulating commerce, then the fifty states (or 57 should Obama be asked) would not be sovereign entities, alone charged with exercising authority to enact laws enhancing the general welfare. They would be merely administrative appendages of the national government, doing only what told to do from on high.
A limited national government of explicitly stated, enumerated powers was enshrined in the Constitution, and has remained inviolate for more than two hundred years, until Roberts brought back to life the insurance mandate as a tax, which legislative enactment was disclaimed by every Senator and Congressman who voted in favor of the ACA, as well as the President in signing the Bill.
What Roberts has accomplished is breathtakingly incompatible with same Constitutional principle he so ardently championed in explaining how the Commerce Clause can not go beyond the regulatory powers as envisioned by the Framers, in order to preserve and maintain our nation's two sovereigns, federal system of limited national government. What Law Judge, not experiencing total cognitive dissonance, would conclude that the Constitution forbids the insurance mandate - as such invalidity is crucial to the very essence of our governmental structure - but then declare that the Framers authorized that same mandate in another provision of the same Constitution.
As noted by the Court's four dissenters, Chief Justice Roberts' Tax power holding is a chimera, an illusion, a fantasy, a semantic construct of such utter arrogant cynicism that it must be characterized as " ... verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists". Indeed, first in Texas, now in all of America: War is Peace, and everybody better love Big Brother, or the IRS will be knocking on your door.
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