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Remember—[Roberts] never said it was good policy, and in fact made it clear that he feels otherwise. What he did was invalidate an unconstitutional argument [i.e., Commerce Clause reasoning that would obliterate any distinction between "active" and "inactive" market participants] in defense of the policy, thereby banning it from future use, and then uphold a bad, but not unconstitutional statute, because it adhered to a permissible exercise of power. Congress passed a tax, he says, and it’s a bad one, and he doesn’t like it, but that doesn’t make it impermissible.

And thus Chief Justice Roberts drew the limit to Congressional exercise of its powers under the Commerce Clause. In short, Congress now must acknowledge the free decisions of individuals WRT whether they want to participate in any "market," in this case the "healthcare market." It cannot just lump all citizens into some abstract "market" and then compel their participation in that market. This is a huge recognition and defense of individual liberty against encroachment by the federal government. This is now a SCOTUS precedent that must be followed by all lower courts, and also by all members of the Executive and Congressional branches of government.

The Obama Administration's main defense of the ACA was appeal to the Commerce Clause. It argued that all human beings, simply by breathing, were already participants in the "healthcare market," and thus their behavior in that market was subject to legislation and regulation.

Roberts drove a stake into the very heart of this line of thinking. In the process, he upheld the idea of individual liberty under law that is the very heart of our constitutional order; and he snuffed any concept of the American body politic that sees human individuals as anonymous, inconsequential "'atoms" in some abstract Mass Man....

In short, the whole idea of the "General Will" takes a big setback, and the Will of the People, successfully defended here, steps out into the full light of day....

[Anyone wanting a "backgrounder" on the General Will vs. Will of the People issue — representing the basic, mutually-opposed ideologies of the French and American Revolutions respectively — can perhaps find a helpful retrospective here.]

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts for this pivotal ruling. And thank you for turning up the heat on His Satanic Majesty by forcing him to "call a spade a spade" — the individual mandate is, pure and simple, a relentlessly regressive TAX, one that largely will be paid by middle-income and poor individuals and families.

And thus the Chief Justice comes about as close as good manners and protocol can allow to calling out the POTUS as a LIAR.

On the other hand, somehow I get the sense that Roberts was implying that he'd just as soon leave "political disputes" to the "political branches" of the government — that is to We the People themselves, and their representatives in Congress.

Of course, the political Left wants all policy disputes resolved in the courts, because they can't otherwise get what they want out of We the People and their representatives in Congress.

What Roberts may have suggested is that SCOTUS' mission is to construe and apply constitutional law, not to resolve political disputes. For that's what elections are all about....

Thank you so very much, dear Servant of the Cross, for the ping to this outstanding article.