John Adams famously and succinctly framed the American ideal when he said that we sought “A government of laws, and not of men.”
If Barack Obama gets his way, that ideal will be only an historical footnote as we are now “A nation of clause, not of men.” The commerce clause.
If the administration’s defense of Obamacare is eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, we will no longer have a Constitution. We will only have a commerce clause.
In an infamous radio interview, Barack Obama complained that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, telling the government what it cannot do. He lamented that the Constitution did not say what the Government should do, such as wealth re-distribution.
But the administration’s and every left winger in Congress’ interpretation of the commerce clause is their end run around those negative liberties. Thus, upon any foolish conceit of a good idea, they can, with impunity, tell anyone anywhere what to do or not do.
The commerce clause is an enumerated power in the Constitution that liberals profess enumerates all power. The clause itself is simple. “[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;”
That is it. This is the basis by which the Obama administration says it has the power to compel each and every person to enter into a contract with a third party for services they may or may not want. By the power to regulate commerce among the several States.
How? According to Obama and statists of various stripes, your action or inaction has the potential to influence commerce. Your failure to buy a California tomato because you grew a tomato in your back yard garden, is interstate commerce because you failed to buy that interstate tomato. Similarly, your failure to buy insurance may at some point effect commerce later if and when you get sick and if and when you might not have the cash to see a doctor.
Extrapolating this understanding of the commerce clause, in which inactivity is classified interstate commerce, there is nothing, nothing the government cannot tell you to do or not to do. For no action or inaction of man cannot in some way be interpreted as having an effect on commerce.
You do not need to be a strict constructionist to realize the lunacy this would unleash.
The Constitution would no longer be a charter of negative liberties, but a charter to negate your liberty. We would no longer have a Constitution, we would only have a clause.
February 8, 2011 at 7:18 am
Eh, by that argument, the country would have been dead since Wickard.
February 8, 2011 at 11:18 am
This is not surprising considering that the people who are currently "in charge" worship the same god as many other Americans: money.
February 8, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Anonymous,
You have a point about Wickard, but I believe this is different. If inactivity can be classified interstate commerce and a person can be compelled to enter into a contract against their will, there is nothing the gov't cannot do and the limits of the Constitution are meaningless.
February 8, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Anonymous
I find it strange that you invoke Wickard since, at that time, Wickard was extremely controversial and rightly accused of overreaching with the commerce clause. History is proving Wickard's critics right.
Let's compare this to Humanae Vitae: everything Pope Paul VI said would happen as a result of widespread contraceptive use has come to be. But his critics still claim he was a misogynistic figure in a backwards Church. Nevermind, that he was right just as Wickard's critics were right.
The death of any country is rarely caused by a single act. The Roman empire didn't have one cause of death, but decades of erosion. Wickard is merely a contributory cause, a small hole in the dike that gets bigger because nobody has been willing to plug it. Another ability, this one judicial, would be Roe v Wade, which could have never passes judicial muster if Griswold v Connecticut hadn't discovered the previously unrecognized right to privacy in the penumbras and emanations of the Constitution. Now the right to privacy is a catch-all for libertinism just as the commerce clause is the catch-all for socialism.
February 8, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Ability = analogy (spelling correction got me)
Passes = passed
Tough to write on an iPad holding a 5-day old.
February 8, 2011 at 6:15 pm
"If inactivity can be classified interstate commerce and a person can be compelled to enter into a contract against their will, there is nothing the gov't cannot do and the limits of the Constitution are meaningless."
This is already the case – it's just done in a roundabout way. One must take one's children to school,for instance, and any number of other things mandated by the Feds.
….But it's done through the carrot approach of highway funds, and doesn't attract attention like this does because it always filters through state intermediaries.
As Charles Lane noted – http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/give_me_liberty_or_give_me_hea.html – "
"Single-payer — and any reduction in liberty it might entail — would be clearly authorized under Congress's power to raise revenue and spend it on the general welfare (Article 1, Sec. 8). Ditto for a state individual mandate like the one Massachusetts enacted under its sovereign police power, which raises no question of congressional authority at all (see the much-maligned Tenth Amendment)."
So, while directly forcing someone to purchase health care might be unconstitutional, if the Fed. government simply did it roundabout, or through spending, then we would find ourselves in a similar situation, with no question of constitutionality.
February 9, 2011 at 1:20 pm
He also cited the Commerce Clause as the constitutional basis for FOCA in the actual bill (go take a look at section 14 and 15B; I'm sure he had a say in writing the bill).
Gerry