By Douglas V. Gibbs
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked "where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?" by a reporter last October, and in response Speaker Pelosi shook her head and replied: "Are you serious? Are you serious?" She then went on to seek out a different question, one more to her liking. Later, Pelosi was pressed for a more substantive response, and rather have the guts to face America, Pelosi's sent out a press spokesman to admonish the reporter, saying: "You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question."
This kind of ignorance, or purposeful disregard, of the U.S. Constitution regarding a mandate to buy health insurance is nothing new. The Clinton Administration tried the same kind of tomfoolery, and the Congressional Budget Office let out this statement in response in 1994: "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government."
In other words, the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government any power as intrusive as forcing all Americans to purchase a service due to their very existence. It is one thing to ban use for the safety of the public, as in the anti-drug laws (which by the way the federal government doesn't have the authority to do either, that is a state issue), but what the Democrats are trying to do here with their health care legislation is tell you that they, the federal government, have the power to regulate commerce to the point of forcing an individual to do something just because he exists.
If the argument by the Democrats is that the Commerce Clause allows them to mandate health insurance ownership, then they can do anything they want to you. At that point one must ask, what's the point of the rest of the Constitution? If they can force you to own medical insurance, then they can mandate you buy government bonds to pay for the wars, or they can mandate that under medical marijuana laws all of us must grow "weed" for the common good, or they can mandate that all women must have an abortion should they get pregnant, unless the federal government provides the allowance for that woman to have a child. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the right to dictate actions to the people in that manner.
The argument to the contrary by the Democrats drags the mandate for car insurance into the fray. Automobile insurance requirements, however, differ from the mandate the Left is pushing in a number of ways. First, it is a state requirement, and not an example of the federal government mandating anything. States have authorities that the federal government does not have, in many cases. Also, the auto insurance laws only apply to folks that drive a motor vehicle, not to all Americans, as would a federal health insurance mandate. The fact that the vehicles are making use of public roads comes into play as well, as does the fact that the insurance laws specifically only require drivers to insure against injury to other drivers, not to insure themselves against personal injury. Insurance beyond liability is a personal choice.
Listening to the Massachusetts voters talk about why they voted in Republican Scott Brown as the 41st GOP Senator in the recent special election to fill the vacant seat left behind by Senator Edward Kennedy, I found their reasons quite fascinating. The mandate to buy health insurance being pushed by the Democrat Party, and other intrusive government agendas by Washington, tended to be the primary reasons the bluest of blue states put a Republican into that seat, it seems. Despite the fact that liberals outnumber conservatives in that state three to one, the people recognize tyranny when they see it, and they voted to put a stop to it. But despite their ability to recognize the symptoms of the problem, their blind devotion to the "anointed one", Barack Obama, is chilling.
A good number of the interviews did not proclaim that their vote was a referendum against Obama, but instead their vote was a message of dissatisfaction to the Congressional Democrats. One of the interviewed voters on Fox News even went on to say that he likes Obama, but the "Congressional Democrats have been leading him in a direction he did not intend to go."
Obama is great at deception. We have seen him do this time and time again. When something goes well, he takes the credit. When things go poorly, he finds a way to dish off the blame to someone else. The economy is a great example of this. When numbers improve, "Our hard work on saving the economy is showing some sign of working!" If numbers crash and burn, he his happy to remind us "I inherited this mess." Now, Obama has gotten so good at shifting blame, he has trained the sheep to do it for him.
Barack Obama is a radical leftist, and the Congressional Democrats didn't do anything that Obama did not want them to do. He has been the conductor orchestrating this madness all along (and some may argue even Obama is a puppet, and there are more radical personalities pulling his strings). People don't believe that, however, because he campaigned from the center, and the fools believed him. They wanted "hope" and "change", and what they are getting is a Democrat Party that has the "hope" to "change" the American Form of Government into something the Founding Fathers never intended it to be. That is how statists, or "socialists" if we must, work. Their strategy is always to promise the people one thing, but deliver another. If you knew the true nature of what they plan, you would never vote them into office in the first place. Once they are in office, the radical leftists try to deliver the socialism they wish you to live under in small doses, never delivering so much that the people discover the exact nature of the game.
The Democrats injected more socialism during the first year of Obama's presidency than their Marxist strategy recommends, trying to mask it with claims that it is "for the common good," or that their radical agenda of government control over health care is a gift from them to you and once you have it you'll like it so much you will never wish to give it back. The American People recognized the tyranny for what it is, and rejected it, and now the Democrats are confused, unable to understand what went wrong, many are arguing among themselves, and they are doing everything they can to point the destruction away from Obama, when in reality Barack Obama is the one with the smoking socialist gun in his hand.
Deception can only go so far before the American People realizes the truth, and pushes the Marxists away.
So what now? Obama is unpopular, his presidency is a dismal failure at the one year mark, the Congressional Democrats are expected to lose their majority in November, and even a seat that once belonged to a Kennedy is being occupied by a Republican. The Democrat Party is in disarray, and is essentially destroyed, for now, and all the leftists can do is run for the hills with their tails between their legs.
I am still amazed it only took Obama a measly year to accomplish such destruction!
As the Democrats have been doing with the health care bill, they will water their socialism down so much that there is only trace amounts of tyranny mixed in with the legislation. They do this not because they believe in lightening up their radicalism, but because they know even trace amounts of socialism leaves the door open for more of it later. Creeping Incrementalism that will even sucker the Republicans into voting for a bill filled with amendments designed to make the GOP happy enough to vote for it. A little here, a little there, and eventually you get so used to the trace amounts of socialism that you demand the whole pot of chili!
That is what the first big progressive president, Theodore Roosevelt, did. That is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did with his New Deal (though, like Obama, he tried to overreach), and that is what every progressive president has done ever since. A sprinkle here, and a sprinkle there, and eventually, when you never thought it possible, America becomes a communist nation under the guise of liberalism, and accepts it with open arms - until the prison door slams shut.
As shown by the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, however, the worst of the danger "may" have been staved off for the time being. I hope that the frantic leftists crying crocodile tears over their Soviet Vodka are right, and it will take another fifteen years before they get this opportunity again.
In fifteen years, or whenever it is that this madness returns, it will do so even more determined than before. Hopefully, by then, we will have read our U.S. Constitution, and we will know it like we know a weapon we must use in battle, and we will be ready to fight off the onslaught of statism, even if it takes revolution to do so.
But don't let your guard down, the election of Scott Brown does not spell the end of the liberal left just yet. They will fight until they have no fight left in them. And remember, progressivism has infiltrated the Republican Party as well. Even Scott Brown calls himself a "big tent Republican."
We must never rest until our government returns to the ideals of a limited government as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.
As Benjamin Franklin responded, when asked what kind of government the founding fathers had given the people, "A Republic, ma'am, if you can keep it."
I pray that we can.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
When Asked Where the Constitution Authorizes Congress to Order Americans To Buy Health Insurance, Pelosi Says: 'Are You Serious?' - CNS News
Scott Brown: Massachusetts election not just a referendum on Obama - The Detroit News
Friday, January 22, 2010
Obama's Destruction of the Democrat Party
The Democrat Apocalypse
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