Guidance vs. Tyranny

The American people did not want President Obama’s socialized medicine, but it was rammed down our angry throats.  People on my side of this wide ideological chasm see it as an unconstitutional outrage foisted upon America by an out of control, power hungry government.  Those on the other side perceive it as the benevolent action of people who know better about what is good for us than we do ourselves – classic elitist liberalism.

The consistent and continuing energetic opposition to ObamaCare in the face of its forced passage poses an interesting question.  Is it ever acceptable for the federal government to force unpopular and unwanted legislation or rulings down to the states and the people?  Given that this is a limited government that allegedly governs only with the consent of the governed, is that the sort of thing that we tolerate in America?  In fact there are situations in which this is legitimate, but certainly not in the broad and dangerous way being demonstrated by the freedom loathing Marxists now running our government, who view the American people as a simple-minded herd of cattle living on their government collective.

When the founding fathers crafted the US Constitution they were faced with the challenge of creating a system that attempted to balance a very legitimate fear of an abusive central government with the reality that the weak Articles of Confederation had been an utter failure.  To address these observed shortcomings while remaining true to the underlying principles of the American Experiment and its Declaration of Independence, the proposed Constitution delegated very specific powers to certain branches of the nascent federal government.  Additionally, providing a balance to the long list of powers and limitations in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights listed specific protected rights of the people and related limitations on government.  Making a final point, they underscored this underlying limited-government philosophy with the all too often ignored 9^th and 10^th amendments, which make it crystal clear how limited the central government was intended to be.

The founding fathers clearly believed that the biggest threat to liberty came from a powerful central government and that most issues should be handled by the several states.  In most cases this is a prudent approach.  But if the central charter of our government involves a commitment to individual rights, what can that federal government do – and what should it do – when the truly fundamental rights required for that civil society are being violated?

After the American Civil War, slavery was finally prohibited in America with the ratification of the 13^th amendment.  However, contrary to the principle so eloquently stated in our founding document that “all men are created equal”, the non-white citizens of many states continued to live as second class citizens, lacking voting rights and the ability to run for elected office.  In short, the states were depriving many American citizens of rights that our system claimed to champion.  At the same time, these very states wished to count these people for purposes of congressional representation.  This unacceptable chasm between the inherent rights so clearly spelled out in our founding documents and the contrasting reality faced by many Americans living without those rights drove the next amendment to our Constitution.

In response to egregious violations of Americans’ individual liberties including acts such as the Black Codes, which were attempts by some states “to control the labor, movements and activities of newly-freed slaves”, the 14^th amendment was proposed to the states.  The first clause of the 14^th amendment demands that the citizens of all states enjoy the constitutional rights of American citizens:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

When the racist Democrats in many southern states would not protect the legitimate constitutional rights of some of their citizens, the federal government rightly stepped in many times.  Most recently, when the Supreme Court declared Chicago’s handgun ban to be unconstitutional in McDonald v. Chicago, they leveraged the 14^th amendment’s privileges or immunities clause.  In both examples the federal government contended that Americans have inherent constitutional rights and that not even the states can violate those unalienable rights.

I provided these as legitimate examples of what you could rightly call guidance from above, in which the federal government is playing its appropriate (post-14^th amendment) role in protecting our liberties – even from the states.  Put simply, we have a basic constitutional template for certain rights and privileges and the 14^th amendment was passed in order to ensure that the states play by these rules.  While there is certainly no shortage of abuses of the 14^th amendment, this legitimate use of what is commonly called Incorporation is in clear contrast with the dangerous and egregiously dishonest manipulations of the Commerce Clause used to justify limitless power grabs by the Obama administration.

The Commerce Clause:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Seriously, that is the entirety of the commerce clause that is being used by statists to gut the Constitution.  You truly have to be a destructive wordsmith capable of skillfully warping the language in order to bend that short clause into the idea that Congress can regulate everything it sees fit, as evidenced by the Obama administration’s contention that the commerce clause gives them the power to force Americans to purchase health insurance.  From the utterly indefensible Wickard v. Fillburn to the current attempts by the Left to control more of our lives, the commerce clause has been abused by tyrants for decades in pursuit of more power.  While reasonable people can see that the intent was to encourage commerce among the states, the left makes the case that any product made can be regulated if it is bought or sold, even if it never crosses state lines to become interstate commerce!  In addition to countless far less benign abuses, this clause is actually used to legitimize Congressional control of the amount of water in your toilet.

In his excellent opinion in US v. Lopez, Justice Clarence Thomas perfectly points out the danger of embracing such an expansive view of the commerce clause:

if taken to its logical extreme, would give Congress a “police power” over all aspects of American life. Unfortunately, we have never come to grips with this implication of our substantial effects formula. Although we have supposedly applied the substantial effects test for the past 60 years, we always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power; our cases are quite clear that there are real limits to federal power.

Accepting the Left’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause means that absolutely nothing is outside the legitimate control of the federal government.

Standing in stark contrast to the legitimate protection of constitutional rights, that is nothing less than tyranny from above.