Sultan Knish
As the day of judgment approaches, half the country sits waiting for a
small group of men and women to decide how many of our civil rights we
get to keep. After two flawed decisions that draw not from the
Constitution, but from policy and opinion, we wait hopefully for a third
opinion that will set us free.
Today the Supreme Court is slightly tilted in our favor, which is to say
that it has a few members who believe that the Constitution is more
than blotting paper for their opinions, and that individuals and states
have rights, rather than just being troublesome cogs in the mighty
machine of the national policy apparatus bent on tackling one growing
crisis or another.
How long will that tenuous state of affairs endure? Who knows. In the
meantime we are caught between an omnipotent executive who believes that
he is above the law, an unelected court which includes two of his
appointees, one of them his lawyer, and a Congress which does little
except spend gargantuan amounts of money. And our best bet is the court,
because it is the hardest to bribe and some of its members believe in
the law, rather than in the almighty policy ends that justify all means.
When the highest official in the land decided to sell the American
people into slavery to insurance companies to get his landmark
legislation passed, we took to the streets to protest, we changed the
composition of Congress, and here we are waiting for the Supreme Court
to decide that maybe we aren't the property of the Executive Branch,
warm bodies to be traded at the slave market of policy to get a bill
passed.
147 years after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are back to
debating slavery. But it's not a debate that began today. Everyone who
pays taxes can calculate how much time they spend working for their
masters in Washington, D.C. How much of their income the serfs are
obligated to send home to the barons in the white palaces who will
decide how much of it to hand out to their friends and how much of it to
use on the endless expenses of government.
Around the same time as the evils of racial slavery were being fought,
the building blocks of economic slavery were being hammered together
with the Revenue Act of 1861, the first Federal income tax and the first
attack on the Constitution, that concluded with the Sixteenth
Amendment. One hundred years before the election that brought Obama to
power, the Democratic platform called for an income tax, "to the end
that wealth may bear its proportionate share of the burdens of the
Federal Government".
The burden has grown vastly since then. It has grown out of all
proportion. And to achieve its goals, the government began selling off
its assets. Its chief assets are us.
The ObamaCare Mandate is a fairly simple trade between health insurance
companies, which largely owe their existence to government tinkering
with the health care market, and its government patron. In exchange for
giving the government what it wants, the government gives them what they
want, us.
Supporters of the Mandate have been legitimately confused by all the
protests. As they understand it, we are property-- so why are we
complaining about being rented out to another master? If Obama and
Congress own us, why can't they lease us out to their supporters in the
insurance industry? Especially when it's for the greater good.
Today we're being leased out to the health insurance industry. Tomorrow
we might be sent out to go bring in the harvest, the way that citizens
were compelled to in Communist countries. Once we have been designated
as warm bodies for sale to the highest bidder, when there is, what
politicians can describe as, a legitimate concern, then there is
absolutely no end to it. And when China finally decides to recoup some
of its investment, there will be a mandate for that too.
The Constitution has been so comprehensively violated and we have been
deprived of so many rights that defending any right becomes a rear-guard
action. After so many violations, we take a stand on the chalk outline
of the latest outrage, while having to argue that this is the red line.
This is the one that is too much. And we put our faith in a Supreme
Court that occasionally respects the Constitution and occasionally
creates its own Constitution. And we sit here waiting to find out which
it will be this time. Freedom or slavery.
Even a Supreme Court defeat for the slavery of the state mandate will not be the end of the story.
The policy machine that grinds on in Washington, in state capitals, in
municipal city halls and in the halls of a thousand think-tanks and the
banquet rooms of a hundred forums is built to deprive people of their
rights. It is not easily stopped. Even when the Supreme Court rules
against it, it studies the ruling and attacks it from another angle
until it gets its way.
Many of the modern violations of our rights went through this process,
losing a Supreme Court decision and then finding another way through the
door. Once the policy apparatus has agreed on something, the mere
objection that it is against the law will not halt them for long. The
only way to stop the machine is to break the machine. To tear out its
levers and gears, to fill it with sand, spill out its oil and turn it to
grind uselessly facing a wall.
A Supreme Court of Constitutionalists might deal it some serious
setbacks, but it has become clear that we are headed into dark territory
where the laws don't matter anymore. Obama has shed most of the
pretense of legality, doing things because he wants them done. The legal
rationale for ObamaCare never existed. Those who wrote and passed it
did not believe that such a rationale was even needed.
Their only argument has been the policy argument, the ends justifying
the means. The policy ends which justify the oppressive means is their
argument for every one of their endless streams of abuses. It is a
position that places them and their actions completely outside the law.
Anything they do is justified because it is for the greater good, to
meet one "growing crisis" or another, whether it's health care, obesity,
racism, bullying, profiteering, homophobia, high prices or anything you
see discussed with serious faces and even more serious hairdos on the
evening news.
Even Supreme Court rulings depend on executive compliance. Obama has
demonstrated several times that he will simply not comply with the law.
And a showdown between the law and an executive backed by the media and a
parade train of experts, not to mention a completely corrupt Attorney
General, will not be a pretty sight.
The mere willingness of the executive branch to operate outside the law
acts as a restraint on the Supreme Court's willingness to challenge the
executive. That is what FDR managed to accomplish by alternately
terrorizing and bypassing the Supreme Court. Obama has shown every sign
of being willing to do the same thing. Some liberals are already
proposing their own court packing schemes. The Washington Post has an article calling for upping the number of justices from 9 to 19, which is certainly one way to gain a majority.
The left has gotten this far by subverting institutions and it is being
increasingly open about not caring for the forms or for anything that
interferes with its objectives. As a defense against it, the Supreme
Court is a fragile entity. It is meant to serve as a final review for a
law-abiding legislature, not for a thuggish executive and a legislature
that passes bills without knowing what it is in them. In an era in which
the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches have all been
warped, none of them can be relied on to do the right thing.
We are in the midst of another Civil War. Not a war of bullets, but a
war of laws. And the lawmaking apparatus is a tool for depriving people
of rights, not a tool for creating safe spaces for rights. In the
firefight, those who want to limit rights through government mandates
will have the upper hand. The Supreme Court, as a reviewing body, is
less vulnerable to the seduction of legislation than the legislative and
executive branches, but it has done its share of legislating, and
activist Federal judges are a reliable way of subverting democracy and
states' rights.
We can't depend on the Supreme Court to do the right thing, though it
can occasionally be an important ally in the struggle to restore the
Constitution, the rule of law and the rights of the individual. The ball
is not in their court, it is in ours. And it is important that we
understand what is at stake. Behind all the policy debates is a simple
question. Do we want to be free men and women or will we agree to be
slaves?
The final review of every act of government does not come from within
the government, but from the people, who have to decide what is
acceptable and unacceptable. This is a law of human nature that is not
subject to any higher court, only the court of the conscience. Rights
and freedoms do not come from government, they come from the people. We
have seen how in Egypt, the people chose slavery. That makes it all the
more vital to remember that, no matter what we are told, we have a
choice, and the greatest power that we have is the knowledge that the
choice and the final decision are ours.
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