The Individual Mandate effectively allows the government to impose cradle to grave power over Americans and it has never existed before in America’s history

Obamacare and Obama versus America and Americans

Jerry Philipson Friday, March 30, 2012

The United States Supreme Court has just heard three days of arguments on whether or not President Obama’s health care bill is legal according to the U.S. Constitution and should therefore be allowed to stand. The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision in June, in the heat of the American Presidential election. The Court has three possible options. It can say that the entire bill is unconstitutional and has to be scrapped, it can say that the bill is constitutional and can go ahead or it can say that parts of the bill are unconstitutional and have to be scrapped but the rest can go ahead.

The decision by the Supreme Court is arguably one of the most important in its history, if not the most important. At stake is whether or not America will continue to be a free country with strict limitations on the power of government to intervene in and control people’s lives or whether it will become a socialist nanny state whose government can compel people to do virtually anything it wants them to…at stake is whether Americans will remain free to make personal decisions in their lives or whether the federal government will have the power to make personal decisions for them, thus taking away their individual freedom and decision making power. Either the nature, character, history, values, principles and Constitution of the country will be upheld or they will not. If they are America and Americans remain free. If they are not, America and Americans lose their freedom and all powerful big government takes over all aspects of life.

The crux of the bill is something called the Individual Mandate. That requires, not recommends or encourages, but requires, individual Americans to purchase a particular commodity e.g. health insurance. That sort of mandate has never existed in the United States before and it is a radical departure from individual liberty and limited government power because it takes away individual liberty and gives the Federal Government unlimited, unfettered power.

After all, if the government can compel Americans to purchase health insurance it can compel them to do anything else too. It can compel them to buy certain kinds of cars, eat certain kinds of foods, possess certain kinds of products, act in certain kinds of ways, subscribe to certain ideas, refrain from certain kinds of behaviour, anything.

The Individual Mandate effectively allows the government to impose cradle to grave power over Americans and it has never existed before in America’s history. Is it constitutional? Can the federal government require American citizens to conduct their lives according to the government’s mandates? Does the government exist to serve the people or control them? Is the government subservient to Americans or are Americans subservient to government?

The Supreme Court will let us know in the next few months. In the meantime Americans should do everything they can to convince the Court to strike down the law. Our way of life depends on it. Not only is Obamacare unconstitutional, an affront to everything America is supposed to stand for and nothing more than a blatant power grab by President Obama and his ideological fellow travellers, it is also financially unsustainable and will bankrupt the country (if it hasn’t already) and won’t provide quality medical care to all Americans anyway. If anyone believes that the passage of the bill will mean that every American will have quality medical care for whatever ails them they are fatally mistaken.

Dead wrong, as the saying goes.

Obamacare and Obama versus America and Americans