President Obama is reportedly shifting millions of dollars to the IRS to begin enforcement of ObamaCare.
This raises the obvious question: What if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, with a decision expected no later than early June?
Anyone who witnessed the passage of this legislation, as well as Obama’s term in office to date, should realize that question is irrelevant. Obama and House Speaker (at the time) Nancy Pelosi vowed to “deem” the bill passed if they couldn’t muster up enough votes in Congress, as they ultimately did.
Obama ran on a platform of “transforming” America, and he meant it. Even he knows a government cannot shape a society into exactly what he wants the people to be. But he sure can use the force of government to try. And this is precisely what he intends to do.
The interesting part will come when and if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare. I cannot predict what will happen. Most conservatives speaking publicly indicate they believe the entire law is going down. How they can know this is beyond me. What seems more likely is that the four liberal justices will absolutely uphold ObamaCare and one (or even two) of the conservatives may wobble. All it takes is one little wobble from one of the conservatives, and the law will stand. Another possibility is that the Court will strike down the mandate, but not the law. The Obama Administration has already announced publicly that this is not a problem. Of course they know full well that it is; otherwise they would not have insisted on the provision forcing everyone to buy health insurance to be in the law, in the first place. When they say “not a problem,” what they mean is they intend to enforce the law regardless of what the Supreme Court does.
That’s when it will really start to get interesting.
This all assumes the Supreme Court will strike down ObamaCare. I believe it was a mistake for conservatives to argue against the ObamaCare law on the premise that it’s a mandate. So is Medicare. So is Social Security. At the federal and state levels, there are enormous and far-reaching mandates to do all kinds of things, everywhere you look. It’s not a stretch to imagine only one conservative justice on the Supreme Court saying, “We already have mandates for other things, like car insurance. Why not health insurance too?”
The coercive aspect of ObamaCare which is so offensive, from a Constitutional point-of-view, is that it forces those who work to pay for the health insurance of those who cannot or will not work. It’s charity at the force of gunpoint — really expensive charity, since health insurance costs thousands of dollars a year for just one patient. Like the rest of the entitlement state, this is nothing more than slavery. This is, to some extent, the premise of Social Security and Medicare. ObamaCare brazenly takes this premise all the way. It states and implies that coercion is valid whenever the government deems it necessary. If the Supreme Court upholds this principle, even on a 5-4 vote, then not only will all of medicine now be owned by the government; all human activity in the United States will be under the ownership of the government.
This sets the stage for “cap and trade” and all manner of government takeovers of all kinds of things, takeovers that those who erroneously supported Medicare and Social Security never dreamed of, at least not in the United States. Strictly speaking, it’s call fascism. Fascism refers to a social system whereby government retains the right to full or partial ownership over all property, enterprises and activity in a country. “Private” property rights still exist in name, at least in some cases, but only when it suits the government. This is the opposite of a constitutional republic, which is how America started out. A constitutional republic is one in which all property is privately owned, and the government may only get involved in the case of violence or fraud against innocent citizens.
If ObamaCare is struck down in its entirety, there will still be two issues facing us. One, what about the fact that coercion is still acceptable in the United States, just not with this particular legislation? What’s to stop the next Democratic President/Democratic Congress from passing a slightly different version of the bill, the next time they control both the White House and Congress?
But there’s an even more immediate problem than that. What happens if the Obama Administration simply refuses to respect the decision to invalidate the law? Get real. Obama does what he wants. Does anyone seriously believe the Obama Administration is actually going to stop trying to harass insurance companies and businesses to cover everyone? They’re going to stop throttling doctors through the power of Medicare and Medicaid? They’re not going to use every bit of power they have — and don’t have — to ensure that as many people get dependent on government coverage as possible, on their watch? I don’t think so. The Obama presidency, and the Democratic Party in general (along with much of the Republican Party), exist for the express purpose of making people dependent on the state. This is what gives them their power.
The American founders saw that tyranny was always a real possibility, even in America, and always would be. What they perhaps didn’t foresee is a future American society where the people, so caught up in the need to be taken care of, became unable or unwilling to recognize the emergence of a tyranny when they saw one. Four members of the Supreme Court have absolutely no problem with government tyranny, and it’s very possible on this decision there could be a fifth.
Perhaps the most interesting moment of all will come if the Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare and the open fascism upon which it’s based. What will the American people do, then? Obama has just begun his quest to transform America through socialism, fascism and the absolutism of the state over the individual. Sooner or later, it will be up to Americans themselves to decide how much transformation they will tolerate.