Posted on 06/30/2012 10:23:54 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, I have noticed a curious phenomenon in which some conservative commentators seem to be so desperate to find a silver lining to the ruling that they have abandoned all logic. Consider George Will, who wrote a column in the aftermath of the ruling that actually puts forward the argument that we conservatives should take the fact that Roberts didn’t rely upon the commerce clause as evidence that there might be some constitutional limitation on the federal government after all. That would be a wonderful aspect of this ruling, if they had overturned the law! Instead, what we have is a monstrous precedent set in which the court re-writes a law in order to make it constitutional by imputing into the act a tax that had not existed in fact. This is an unmitigated disaster. I have heard a few who have noted hopefully that this ruling will energize the conservative base, and while that’s probably the case, I’m not certain I am so concerned about the political fall-out as I am about the long-run constitutional implications. You see, the political situation may permit us to repair the law, but it doesn’t permit us to immediately repair the damage done to the body of case law upon which future courts will rely as precedents in their own rulings.
The other thing I have read is the bizarre notion put forward by the National Review that what Roberts did was more conservative because he exercised judicial restraint in not striking down the law. Balderdash! Once you realize the legal contortions through which Roberts arrived at this ruling, it makes no sense whatever to claim he hadn’t acted as an activist. The convoluted logic by which he found a tax in a law that plainly states it does not contain one is an onerous breech of any notion of strict construction. I cannot conceive of any intellectually rigorous examination of this ruling by which this can be seen as a positive by anybody who is in favor of strict construction. When it came to the Anti-Injunction section of the ruling, it was held not to have been a tax, but just a few pages later, as Roberts performed mental gymnastics, he declared it was a tax after all.
On Thursday evening, Mark Levin summarized the matter better than anybody I’ve heard speak to this matter, in part because he understands the legalities in question, his Landmark Legal Foundation having been a participant in this case, but also because he knew Justice Roberts years ago when they both worked in the Reagan administration. Levin’s critique of the decision mirrors most of my own, and indeed, there was one aspect I hadn’t considered until Levin led me to it. That premise led me to yet another that I don’t believe Levin has yet realized in full. What one must understand is that this ruling is an unmitigated disaster, and no search for some alleged silver lining can repair it.
What Justice Roberts actually did was to expand the definition of what constitutes a permissible tax . Congress is permitted to levy only certain forms of tax, and this one doesn’t fit the definition of any of them. In dispensing with that issue, Roberts held that it didn’t matter, and that words don’t matter, and that plain-written legislative language doesn’t matter. He also ignored the context of the law, and the intent of Congress. One version of this bill had an actual tax, but Congress could not pass it in that form, so Congress altered it to contain no tax. What John Roberts did was to ignore the actual text of the legislation, and to say that the labels didn’t matter: If it looks like a tax, it is one. The problem with this is that it does nothing to restrain Congress from levying new taxes, and ignores the definitions of what sort of taxes Congress may enact. This is a wholesale extension of Congressional taxing authority because what Roberts ruled with respect to the particular form of the tax, insofar as the question of whether Congress had met the constitutional limits on whether it could impose it was effectively: “Close enough.”
That is offered to us as evidence of John Roberts’ alleged strict construction? Close enough? What this means, effectively, is that if Congress enacts some tax that it has questionable constitutional authority to levy, smiling John will be there to tell us it’s “close enough,” with every leftist monster on the court standing behind him to uphold it.
Ladies and gentlemen, there exists no silver lining to this ruling. All of the crackpot, delusional happy-talk from some conservatives in media is designed to make you feel better. You’ve just lost both arms and legs in a brutal assault, but they tell you, you should consider this a happy opportunity to enjoy the comforts of a new wheelchair and mouth-controlled joystick. You’ve just lost your family to a violent home-invasion, but, they tell you, you should view this as a chance to start over. The intention here is to keep you calm. The intention now is to serve a political end, while your country is dying around you. Your most sacred law, the US Constitution, has been crumpled and tossed into the ash-bin of history, and you are told you should do a happy-dance to the calming sounds of “Oh Happy Days.”
I’d like you to inventory the whole of the conservatives to whom you listen, or whose columns and opinions you read, and I want you to take care to note which of them are imploring you to consider some silver lining. They are lying. They have good intentions, many of them, and they have contorted themselves into a formless spaghetti of reasoning in order to find some good in this awful plate of refuse you’ve been handed. Don’t surrender your minds by sprinkling Parmesan on it and wolfing it down. Are there some limited political opportunities as a result of this decision? Yes, but they require the fulfillment of a whole laundry-list of “if-then” statements.
IF Mitt Romney is elected, and IF he doesn’t sell us out, and IF we hold the House, and IF we recapture the Senate(and at least 60 votes) and IF the moderates in either house don’t screw us, and IF Boehner and McConnell have the guts to do in repealing what the villains Reid and Pelosi did in passing the ACA, and IF they can deliver a bill to President Romney’s desk, and IF John Roberts and the other liberals on the court can be replaced, and IF Mitt Romney can replace them with actual strict constructionists, THEN you might have a chance to undo this damage. IF any of these don’t happen, your constitution is effectively dead as a restraint on government.
The danger of self-imposed delusions is that you come to believe them, like a pathological liar. It is by this form of self-delusion that we’ve permitted our country to lose its roots in reverence for the Constitution. We cannot defeat the statists by pretending this isn’t the disaster that it is, if we can defeat them at all. I believe some talking heads know this, but do not want to yield to what will come in the wake of such a monstrosity. They’re hanging on, stubbornly telling us that the stench of smoke reaching our nostrils is merely an air freshener of a novel scent. Rather than screaming “Fire,” and warning conservative Americans that the house is ablaze, the barn is wiped out, the surviving farm animals running loose in a frantic bid to stay ahead of the flames licking at their heels, many are now telling you that it’s all okay. It will be fine.
I support your analysis.
No solutions to problems will ever come from DC, because DC is the problem.
All each election cycle is about is which bunch of degenerate crooks, cowards, con men, and liars gets to control and redistribute the money extorted by the IRS from us chumps outside the beltway, and how much of it.
It's plain to see what is going on in DC to anyone who has ever spent any time there, the place is perpetually flush with cash, with hundreds of thousand of Federal Apparatchiks with huge smiles on their faces walking around drawing huge salaries, plus bonuses and pensions courtesy of us dolts in the hinterland.
What has the GOP ever done when they controlled the WH and Congress that materially changed anything, or made the Federal Bureaucracy smaller?
We still have the agencies like IRS, the Department of Energy, and Education, and EPA, and to boot, they established new ones like DHS and TSA.
Anyone who tries to starve the beast is politically assassinated by propagandists from the left and right, like Gingrich was over the Government shutdown at the end of his career in Congress and again a few months ago when he tried for the nomination.
There will be nothing coming out of DC other than a bigger hand in your pocket and more limits on your freedom.
The DC problem will not be solved politically.
The FOUNDERS had no intention of establishing Universal Suffrage and DELIBERATELY did not put a right to vote in the Constitution because they knew it would lead to the collapse before us today, and make no mistake about it, when the Social Security checks stop coming, there will be a collapse.
Universal Suffrage has been enacted via Constitutional Amendments, hell, the communists are even giving illegal aliens the vote by Executive Order.
Collapse and reset are the only way out of this now, and rotating the Capital amongst the States.
There is no greater threat to the freedom and prosperity of the American Citizenry than the Federal Apparatus in Washington DC, and anyone who thinks all we have to do to change things is send the "right" people there hasn't looked at the situation from a logical perspective at best, or at worst, is self delusional.
Understanding your issues with Romney, you feel a continued Obama Presidency is a better bet for nascent life? Because without your support at the booth, that’s the gamble you’re making.
Is there no chance Romney would sign GOP restrictions on PP funding?
Conservative inaction benefits Obama, and makes things more difficult for the inevitable GOP Houses.
We need all 3 Houses.
As I see it, Jim, we have one chance only left to us. One non-violent chance, that is. We can either take our country back this November, or kiss it goodbye forever. There won’t be another chance after this election.
From MarkAmerica's spiel:
"IF Mitt Romney is elected..."
Then I misunderstood where you were coming from all along.
You prefer Romney over Obama. I prefer neither. I absolutely will not support an abortionist/homosexualist statist for the presidency. Period.
That’s the plain truth as clear as I can state it.
Well, if you are genuinely indifferent between the Romney and Obama, then that is your preference.
The fact remains that there is a substantial amount of campaigning for Obama on this site, and this campaigning is often conducted in ways that are unconservative.
You know, claiming that people who state that they won't vote for Romney are campaigning for Obama is equivalent to claiming that people who state that they will vote for Romney are campaigning for abortion.
Surely, your mind is subtle enough to grasp that one can be opposed to both Romney and Obama, especially since (as you were reminded by those videos) Romney and Obama agree about most everything important.
One more time for those of you in or near Rio Linda:
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Our God-given Life, Liberty and freedoms are NOT negotiable!!
For God, Family, Country, Life and Liberty!!
Romney is NONE of the above. He is not the solution. He’s part of the problem. Been there, done that.
Sorry. I don’t support lying pro-choice democrat socialists, not even those with R’s by their names.
Now that’s more like it. That’s what Jim Robinson sounds like when he posts.
I’d have a hard time seeing what a blank or third party vote would mean either to God or man at this point, but this is the place where groups of us agree to disagree. We know what you will choose and respect you even if we disagree. The election process is way more than general elections. By a measure which had previously always predicted winners (volume of T shirt sales), Sarah Palin was appearing the fave. But she declined to run and it’s pointless to argue why. That’s when the herds of cats appeared and it all went downhill. Trying to avoid a replay of THAT would be more helpful than voting a protest candidate, but just IMHO.
Obama is a greater threat to nascent life. My goal is to help reduce the killing. I can’t let other voters make that determination for me.
FRegards.
Well, Jim..we are going to be stuck with Romney or Obama and I will take my chances with Romney...warts and all.
Beat the Obamanation.
If you can vote for Romney and be proud of it, then that’s what you should do. And, don’t look back.
The only thing I will be proud of is helping to beat Obama.
Who has claimed that those merely stating that they won't vote for Romney are campaigning for Obama? Not me. Obviously one has to do more than this to be objectively described as campaigning for Obama.
(One example of what more an Obama supporter might do is to deliberately use tendentious, straw-man arguments against Romney supporters. Seen any of these lately?)
I say that numerous persistent and prolific FReepers are doing far more than simply stating that they won't vote for Romney, and that these posters are by any objective standard campaigning for Obama. Are you saying that I am wrong?
Well, however it comes out, you should do what you think is right for you. You’ll never need to answer to any other human being but yourself.
AMEN
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