More Fascism in America Upheld by the Supreme Bureaucrats

by Scott Lazarowitz

Recently by Scott Lazarowitz: A Disagreement With Collectivist Anti-Business Conservatives on Immigration

Given so many bad decisions by the Supreme Bureaucrats in Washington in the past few years, I am not surprised that they would uphold one of the worst and most clearly un-American pieces of legislation in U.S. history.

The Supremes upheld the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare. The biggest surprise for me was that the "conservative" appointee of President George W. Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined the four communists "liberals" in approving what is essentially the power of the federal government to order Americans to buy health insurance.

As Ryan McMaken observed, "Now that one of Bush's appointees saved Obamacare for Obama, every conservative who voted for Bush to get ‘strict constructionists’ on the bench should have the word ‘sucker’ tattooed on his or her face."

Chief Bureaucrat Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Now, in that terrible, freedom-destroying opinion, Roberts wrote, as told by Reuters,

"The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court's majority.

"Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," he concluded. The conservative Roberts joined the four most liberal justices to uphold the law's key provision.

The threatened fine as punishment for not buying health insurance is not a "tax." To me, a government "tax" is a fee that is imposed on the civilian, non-government victim to involuntarily use government services. That is supposedly why we have taxes: to pay for government services (that we did not contractually agree to use in the first place).

You cannot call this punishment-fine a "tax" because the people whose wealth is being stolen are not being punished for not using a government service. They are being punished for not buying a privately-provided medical insurance plan. It is not a "tax." As Nancy Lugosi would say, "Are you serious?"

Perhaps it is time for Chief Bureaucrat Roberts to retire, no?

And this fascism will be enforced by the notorious and unconstitutional IRS. In my opinion, IRS income-thefts are unconstitutional because they consist of government bureaucrats intruding and prying into individuals’ private lives, which they have no right to do.

The Fourth Amendment states that we have a "right to be secure" in our persons, papers, houses and effects. The Fifth Amendment states that we have a right not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

So just who are these government bureaucrats to demand that we report our private financial contracts and employment matters, property sales, bank accounts to them? All these matters are private matters and are none of the government’s damn business!

This reporting to the government our private financial matters, our private health and medical matters, or other matters that are private has been one big step toward yet another tyranny that has taken us all down to the status of banana republic.

As Leviathan grows in size, power and intrusiveness – and more and more every day, it seems – our liberty shrinks and shrinks.

Of course, Barack Obama’s main goal – and that of many Democrats and progressives – is for single-payer health care. That’s a total government monopoly over the health care-insurance system (i.e. SovietCare).

Total State control is what many of these tyrants crave, and for them to be at the top. This Supreme decision fuels their totalitarian fire.

But, there shouldn’t be too much panic amongst the freedom-loving masses. As in 2010, the voters can always elect anti-ObamaCare candidates to the Senate and Congress this November, candidates who will promise to repeal ObamaCare if elected.

But wait a minute! Didn’t many of those candidates in 2010 who were elected also promise to repeal ObamaCare? And did they repeal ObamaCare? Nope. Oh well, as I wrote in March, 2010, these elections are mere rearranging of deck chairs, and just kicking the can down the road toward Amerika’s final collapse.

So while Congress is not reliable in saving us from the federal government’s overreaches, usurpations and intrusions, neither is the Supreme Court.

The Supremes are a government monopoly in ultimate judicial decision-making. Monopolists are not accountable.

But these monopolists will obviously be loyal to their fellows who also "work" for the State. They will not come to the defense of the individual and one’s liberty.

Another problem with these well-fed and pampered Supreme Monopolist Bureaucrats is their lacking in common sense.

For example, the five "conservative" Justices recently voted to uphold police strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses such as overdue parking tickets or walking a dog without a leash. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that "people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals."

But Justice Kennedy, how many people arrested for overdue parking tickets really turn out to be "the most devious and dangerous criminals"? There is no common sense in that! In my opinion – and, of course, I may be way off here, I don’t know – when a case comes before you in which someone has been arrested for an overdue parking ticket, someone who has actual common sense would say, "It’s just a parking ticket! That’s NOT an arrestable offense!" Such a Justice with actual common sense would vote to forbid such invasive, potentially harmful strip-searches. But not Justice Kennedy (and his four fellow supreme schmucks). Some states have been expanding their long lists of arrestable offenses now, in the Totalitarian States of Amerika.

By the way, if someone actually is arrested for some minor thing, such as walking a dog without a leash, he or she should not only sue the local police department, but have the arresting officer arrested and charged with endangerment. That officer’s arresting some innocent civilian and bringing him or her to the police station and made to stay in a cell with actual criminals is endangering that civilian’s life. In this case, it is the arresting officer who is the dangerous criminal! But I digress.

So, as an alternative to the useless "Supreme" Court, what is needed is scrapping the whole system in favor of freedom. No restrictions on competition. People should exercise their God-given right to seek third-party arbitrators in their communities or their neighborhoods and not be forced to use the one government-run service. In an actual free society, no one would have any monopoly power, certainly not the power to order someone to buy health insurance, or do this or that against one’s will.

And the inhabitants of each of the states that compose the United States of America should not be forced by law (or the Constitution!) to have to rely on the federal Supreme Bureaucrats for the final word on anything.

As I mentioned, Americans having this federal-government monopoly in ultimate judicial decision-making has shown to be counter-productive to the preservation of liberty. We can probably expect that, when the economy and the system collapses and there is civil unrest and martial law, the Obama Regime will attempt to totally disarm the civilian population, and the Supremes will uphold that. "It’s an emergency, you know."

In our current system of so-called justice, such a non-contractual, not-voluntarily agreed-upon relationship between the people and the federal government has shown to be a complete farce. In such a bizarre, banana republic system, the people are serfs of the State and its bureaucrats.

As Hans-Hermann Hoppe stated in Private Law Society,

Just imagine a security provider, whether police, insurer or arbitrator, whose offer consisted in something like this: I will not contractually guarantee you anything. I will not tell you what specific things I will regard as your to-be-protected property, nor will I tell you what I oblige myself to do if, according to your opinion, I do not fulfill my service to you – but in any case, I reserve the right to unilaterally determine the price that you must pay me for such undefined service. Any such security provider would immediately disappear from the market due to a complete lack of customers. Each private, freely financed security producer instead must offer its prospective clients a contract. And these contracts must, in order to appear acceptable to voluntarily paying consumers, contain clear property descriptions as well as clearly defined mutual services and obligations …

While states, as already noted, are always and everywhere eager to disarm its population and thus rob it of an essential means of self-defense, private law societies are characterized by an unrestricted right to self-defense and hence by widespread private gun and weapon ownership. Just imagine a security producer who demanded of its prospective clients that they would first have to completely disarm themselves before it would be willing to defend the clients’ life and property. Correctly, everyone would think of this as a bad joke and refuse such on offer. Freely financed insurance companies that demanded potential clients first hand over all of their means of self-defense as a prerequisite of protection would immediately arouse the utmost suspicion as to their true motives, and they would quickly go bankrupt. In their own best interest, insurance companies would reward armed clients, in particular those able to certify some level of training in the handling of arms, charging them lower premiums reflecting the lower risk that they represent. Just as insurers charge less if homeowners have an alarm system or a safe installed, so would a trained gun owner represent a lower insurance risk.

People would thus be able to defend themselves if some neanderthal claiming to be a neighborhood security provider attempted to "arrest," kidnap and detain someone for an overdue parking ticket. The same thing would apply to someone claiming to punish an individual for disobeying government bureaucrats’ fascist commands to buy health insurance.

July 2, 2012

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his blog.

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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