Second bad SCOTUS ruling in a week ...
Did
you catch President Obama’s opener at the White House while responding to the
horrendous Supreme Court ruling on
Obamacare? It’s a crash of the Constitution.
He said:
“Five years ago, after nearly a century of talk, decades of trying, a year of
bipartisan debate, we finally declared in America health care is not a
privilege, but a right for all.”
Cue
image of Founding Fathers in graves, rolling.
Health.
Care. Is. Not. A. Right.
Except,
now it is. And the reverberations due to be heard around the country from this
core outcome of the court’s ruling – 6-3, in favor of upholding the subsidies
in Obamacare – are going to be massive. How so? Just take a before-after shot.
Once
upon a time, some guys with some good orating skills and even better
writing talents gathered together for some political shop-talk in Philadelphia
to see if they could come up with a proper way to inform the King of England
they weren’t going to play his reindeer games any more. Idea men were
appointed: This “Committee
of Five,” as it was dubbed, included John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger
Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of
New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson spent nearly three weeks
penning what was to become one of the greatest political policy positions the
world’s ever seen, the Declaration of Independence. And among its many simple
premises was this powerful phrase – that governments are instituted to uphold
the God-given rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Health
care did not make the list.
But
now, thanks to the Supreme Court, the floodgates of this limited government
principle have been thrust wide. As Justice
Antonin Scalia wrote in his fiery
dissent: The court was guilty of “interpretive jiggery-pokery,” a phrase defined
by Merriam-Webster
as “dishonest or suspicious activity.” What would be the proper term, I wonder,
to describe a court case that now solidifies what many in the patriotic,
traditional-minded and conservative-thinking camps of politics and culture fear
is a socialist vein creeping into American society?
Oh
yes – that’s called Burwellian, a playful little mix of “Orwellian” and the
case name, King v. Burwell. And it’s being picked up by Democratic Sen. Bernie
Sanders, the self-described socialist who is steaming fast and furious ahead to
unseat presidential heir apparent Hillary Clinton from her throne. Recent
polls, too, find in his favor.
Bloomberg
Politics just reported: “In simultaneous surveys, the U.S. senator from
Vermont received nearly a quarter of support from likely Democratic caucus and
primary voters in the states that host the first presidential nomination
balloting early next year, cutting sharply into Clinton’s still-huge lead. The
polls suggest substantive and symbolic support for the socialist, as well as a
craving among some Democrats for a Clinton rival to rise.”
Meanwhile,
the number of candidates in the Republican presidential field has hit Lucky 13 –
a bevy that will no doubt cause enough infighting to frustrate the few voters
left in America whose attention spans aren’t limited to the time-frame of
typing a tweet. Can you say disenfranchised? Let’s hope the candidate emerging
from primary season is enough of a principled politician … well, let’s hope, at
least, he or she is not a moderate.
Because
moderate in Republican circles of late seems to mean Democratic. And in the
Democratic circles, we seem to have an emerging socialist party.
So
to recap: We’ve got a Supreme Court that just threw a dagger at limited
government. We’ve got a sitting president who just received a judicial
hand-clap for his socialist Obamacare. And we’ve got an emerging Democratic
presidential candidate with a self-declared love of socialism and a voter base
that finds his message compelling – and a Republican Party that seems
emasculated, at worst, and confused, at best, in how to rein in this
entitlement-minded atmosphere.
The
days of America as a republic seem to be reaching their end. So how about a
note of inspiration, to turn back the clock and remind who we are? This one
from Patrick Henry seems most apt: “I know not what others may choose but, as
for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
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