Americans are struggling — and failing — to come to grips with a terrifying reality: Our government no longer accepts any legitimate limits to its power.
Since Obamacare became law of the land in March, constitutionalists have held out great hope that the courts would step in and strike it down. Specifically, the so-called “individual mandate” provision of Obamacare, which requires every citizen to purchase health insurance or face government censure, has been seen as ripe for constitutional challenge.
A recent decision by a federal judge has therefore come as a splash of icy water in the face of those who hope the courts will still protect the citizens from the rapacities of the federal government. On Oct. 7, Judge George Caram Steeh, of the Eastern District of Michigan, became the first judge to throw out a challenge to the individual mandate on its merits (others had been thrown out on technicalities), concurring with the federal government that the provision falls within the powers of Congress to regulate commerce.
True, there are at least a dozen more challenges to Obamacare working their way through the system, but Steeh’s decision presages other similar decisions. And why not? The courts long ago became little more than a rubber stamp to legislatures and executives who have gathered more and more power into their hands at our expense, often by generously “interpreting” Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the authority to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”
In 1942, to name one egregious example, the Supreme Court in Wickard v. Filburn held that a farmer could be forced to destroy crops he had produced on his own property — for his own use — because the government had decided it had the right to tell farmers how much wheat they could grow.
In light of this and similar precedents, which have the weight of decades behind them, there is virtually no power that Congress can exercise that a court could not justify.
To sum up: Congress can order you to engage in commerce. Congress can order you to not engage in commerce. Congress can dictate the terms of that commerce, to the point of punishing you if the commerce is not to its liking.
The question then arises — what can’t Congress regulate? What can’t it tell us to do? What aspect of our lives is beyond its authority?
The answer, of course, is nothing. Americans have perhaps not yet thought of things in such stark terms, but they had better start, because the fact of the matter is that our liberties are now little more than a convenient fiction.
Obamacare is merely the last chapter of a trilogy, the inevitable conclusion of the story that began with the New Deal and continued with the Great Society.
Americans have been surrendering their liberties a little bit at a time for decades now, in exchange for “guaranteed benefits.” And now they awake to find their liberties gone, and no money left in the public coffers to guarantee the benefits for which they exchanged their independence.
Politicians have legislated our liberty out of existence, and the courts have given their usurpations the stamp of legitimacy. But we the people are ultimately responsible — we have elected these politicians, after all, often by wide margins.
The angry voters of this country, when casting about for blame at the nation’s untenable fiscal situation, need look no further than the nearest mirror.
And while gazing into the glass, we should begin asking ourselves: If the courts fail to protect us, and the Republicans fail to rescue us — what are we prepared to do?
Matt Patterson is senior editor at Capital Research Center and a contributor to “Proud to Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation” (HarperCollins, 2010). His e-mail is [email protected].
