The end
Sage McLaughlin writes:
By my reading of the situation, Chief Justice Roberts has decided that the Congress can in fact pass a law requiring Americans to eat broccoli, just so long as the law includes a heavy punitive financial penalty for failure to comply. Because then it would just be a tax. Or something.
Our history as a republic under a government of limited, enumerated powers is officially at an end, thanks to yet another Supreme Court justice nominated by a President named Bush.
LA replies:
Since the Congress can now command citizens to do anything the Congress wants, since America as a republic under a government of limited powers is now officially dead, therefore conservatism, which if it means anything means support for that republic of limited powers, is now also dead. For conservatives to continue to support the constitution means supporting a leftist government with unlimited powers. Therefore the only meaningful form that conservatism can now take is counterrevolution, which means: opposition to the lawless regime that America now is, and the declared intent to dismantle it. Any “conservatism” short of counterrevolution is simply subscription to, loyalty to, patriotism to, subservience to, a leftist unlimited state.
- end of initial entry -
Aditya B. writes:
I’m sure a million readers have already forwarded diverse links to the same item.
Check & Mate. It’s over. Now there’s nothing left to conserve. The only reason left to fight is a sense of duty, a dharma, if you will.
Nothing we say or do will make the slightest difference anymore. We have lost. There is nothing left to conserve.This nation is now, formally, a Socialist state.
My nightmare has come true. In all seriousness, I am contemplating returning to Hindustan as there is no point grinding my fingers to the bone to support the twenty-million plus Mestizo invaders who will rush to take advantage of this system. It doesn’t matter how hard I work, I will never enjoy a decent middle class existence. Nor will I ever have the satisfaction of living in a proud, self-reliant nation.
There is an invisible hand guiding these affairs. The majority vote was cast by a man (Roberts) who was opposed by the man who proposed this bondage (Obama). There is a higher power at work here and it alone knows what terrors and misery it holds in store for these United States. I hope your readers pray for the health of this nation, for their neighbors and friends, and for themselves.
The U.S. is on its way out. We are a soft, sinful, decadent and spent nation. And the Gods of Copybook Headings are on their way.
Robert B. writes:
This whole scenario is eerily similar to the about face that the SCOTUS did in 1938 after being threatened by FDR. Obama has been threatening Roberts for three years. Even more bizarre is how Ginzburg was chortling last week that everyone was going to be surprised at the realignment of the votes.
We have, as I stated earlier, crossed the Rubicon.
Jeanette V. writes:
I don’t even recognize this country. The USA no longer exists. The Supreme’s decision was the final nail in the coffin. As for me the 4th of July will be a time of great sadness. I’m afraid I don’t have even have it in me to place my hand over my heart when the national anthem plays.
James R. writes:
Now conservatives and “conservatives” get to put your hopes in voting for Romney (R—Ruling Class) and that he and other functionaries will not only put real effort behind repealing it, but will nominate better justices.
As for me I’ve had enough with being Charlie Brown to these Lucy-types. I have Chief Justice Roberts to thank for liberating me from the last argument I took seriously for casting my vote for the lesser of two evils: “What about the courts? You don’t want to let the liberals pack the Court with anti-constitutional “Living Constitution” commissars, do you?”
No, but what is worse than that, is having “the most Conservative Court Ever” do what the Left—the E.J. Dionne’s of the world—think is the proper role of conservatism: giving cover to the advances of leftism and making leftist ideology into a “bipartisan consensus” that only “fringe ideologues and ignorant rednecks in flyover country could possibly disagree with,” because, after all, “even people like Roberts (and Romney back when he was Governor) agree.”
LA writes:
As for John Roberts, see what I was saying about him at the time of his nomination in 2005. I said he was a liberal.
Alexis Zarkov writes:
I’m not surprised the Supreme Court upheld the ACA. I also expected that if upheld with a 5-4 majority, Roberts would be the turncoat. I am surprised that the Mandate was upheld as a tax because every (or most every) lower court ridiculed the tax justification, even those courts that held the Mandate constitutional under the Commerce Clause. After all a tax is something designed to raise revenue, and the Mandate is pretty clearly not going to do that. Obama himself said it was not a tax. The government lawyers were all but embarrassed to make the tax argument. In other words, the Supreme Court chose the weakest possible argument to uphold ACA. This is naked results-based jurisprudence. It’s possible that Obama was able to intimidate Roberts, or Roberts simply didn’t want to have his court invalidate an act of Congress. I think that the last time that happened was in 1935 with Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. In that case the Court unanimously held the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. Note again, unanimously. Roberts wasn’t going to get that, and I think he was afraid his court would look too partisan if it stuck down ACA. That’s the argument Obama made, and it looks like Roberts bought it. We now have a naked dictator who rules by decree, and can intimate the judiciary. That’s how I see it. Welcome to fascist America.
Where to we go from here? Nowhere. The Western (meaning white) world has decided to go for suicide—Freud’s death drive, and there’s not much we can do to stop it.
James N. writes:
I am really, really sad about the decision today.
Loren P. writes:
Subject: Sic semper tyrannis
It has finally come.
Howard Sutherland writes:
The Supreme Court, via G.W. Bush-appointee John Roberts (conservatives should be wary of lawyers who graduated both from Harvard College and the Harvard Law School—the pedigree Roberts shares with equally treacherous G.H.W. Bush-appointee David Souter), has allowed Obamacare’s individual mandate to stand. Not because the individual mandate itself is constitutional; it quite plainly is not. But because five Supreme Court justices, including the Chief, have engaged in the intellectually dishonest sleight-of-hand of re-characterizing it as a tax, as nonsensical as that is. The individual mandate is a penalty; a tax is a payment to the government to pay for services the government provides to citizens (supposedly)—a tax is not inherently a penalty.
Nevertheless, this has happened, and the Supreme Court, exceeding its excesses of the New Deal years, has now ratified that the United States has—and, in the Supreme Court majority’s view, may constitutionally have—a Socialist government. What to do about that? We little people, unfortunately, can do very little by ourselves. But Mitt Romney, who is manifestly not one of the little people, has just been handed a golden opportunity by the Supreme Court. Romney can now, without wondering whether the Court is about to render the issue moot, run aggressively against Obamacare and the individual mandate, and ask Americans to elect him and a Republican-majority Congress that will as its first order of business in 2013 repeal Obamacare in its entirety.
Will Romney do that? His missing-in-action response to Obama’s illegal caudillo-style amnesty-by-decree and Obama’s arrogant and illegal retaliation against Arizona after the Supreme Court’s previous baby-splitting exercise does not give one hope for change. I suspect though, that in Romney’s mind, Obamacare and illegal immigration are very different types of issue. Most importantly, given his fixation on economics to the exclusion of all else, Romney—both in his own mind and in his campaign—can frame Obamacare an economic issue. And so it is, although it is far more than just that. (And of course illegal immigration has devastating economic impacts, but my impression is that Romney chooses not to see those.)
If Romney campaigns full-bore on an unconditional-repeal platform, and avoids the trap of appearing to favor amnesties through some form of “DREAM” Act, Obamacare may be an election-winning issue for him.
Paul M. writes:
Sadly, I must agree with you that, ” … the only meaningful form that conservatism can now take is counterrevolution, which means: opposition to the lawless regime that America now is, and the declared intent to overthrow it.”
Bad enough that the Supreme Court essentially abdicated its role as defender of the freedoms the Constitution was meant to preserve. Worse, in my mind, was how Congress simply rolled over and played dead on June 15th, when Obama over-rode Congress’s multiple votes against the DREAM Act and gave amnesty to 1.4 million illegal aliens.
Both the Supreme Court and Congress have given up their roles as a check to Executive Branch tyranny. Jeannette V. is correct. The USA no longer exists. We now live under a Party Rule system, where the political party in power can govern however it sees fit and the peoples’ role consists merely of deciding which of the two parties is given power to oppress us.
Robert P. writes:
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
An Indian living in the West writes:
I am not sure that this constitutes the end. The Supreme Court has actually been instrumental in destroying the Constitution in a thousand different ways for nearly a century. I think that the left’s capture of academia was a seminal event which facilitated this process. And it is a process that actually began in the 1930s (rather than the 1960s).
I am tempted to agree with Aditya B. when he says that he may well return to India if the United States turns into a country like India. This is a very tempting thought but I hate to remind him that even with all the various acts of destruction against the Constitution, America remains the freest country on earth and Liberty, although damaged in so many ways, still lives. Think about it for a minute: where in the world do you still have as much freedom as you have in America? Britain? Germany? France (perish the thought)? Canada? Australia?
Latin America and Africa are not even worth talking about. Much of Asia (Islamic or non-Islamic) is despotic. Conceptions of Liberty are alien to almost every country in Asia. I have not done much business in China but was talking to one of my friends who has. He told me that China has levels of corruption that makes India look clean. I was really shocked by it. China is a lawless despotism in which the upper functionaries of The Party can do almost anything they want. The thought that I find terrifying is that China could one day replace America as the world’s dominant power. That would be a catastrophe for all mankind if it happens.
Perhaps I am trying to play the moderating influence here. As sick as America has become, I still believe it is the freest country on earth. Which is also sad in a way as it is a reflection on the state of mankind. The American founders knew that they were engaging in a unique experiment in human history, the like of which had never been tried before and the like of which may never be attempted thereafter. The French revolution showed how different the two experiments were (though separated by a mere thirteen years). True American patriotism (as I understand it) had to do with a true understanding and love of the founding and a realisation that it represented (as Reagan once said), “the best hope for man.”
It is sickening what the liberals are doing. But they learn to loathe that history and the founding from a young age. To them it is an unmitigated evil that must be destroyed at all costs. And they are clearly far more vociferous in enforcing their vision than are the conservatives at defending the founding.
Randy B. writes:
It’s a great/exciting, but dangerous ideology of all or nothing. I agree in concept that the Constitution is dead, or it has been so co-opted that its protections no longer have value to free persons. On the other hand, if we take the stance (however justified) of counterrevolution, we lose 7/8’s of the people who are currently declaring themselves as Conservatives or Constitutionalist. It is easier to cry freedom then it is to partake in its costs and obligations.
No part of me is suggesting another solution, but we had better be well prepared, and in today’s ideological mishmash of emotional rule, we had better acting under the guise of saving children, spotted owls, or the Biscayne Manatee. And any movement in this direction cannot be planned on or over the Internet … now what?
Matthew H. writes:
Today’s Supreme Court ruling reminds me of 1 Kings 3 where we read of Solomon’s wisdom in the case of two women both claiming to be the mother of the same baby. The king orders the baby split in two with each woman getting a half.
Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
Those of us who truly love this nation and its traditions of limited government and ordered liberty are like the real mother fighting for custody of our own child, the American Republic. The Left is like the spiteful mother who in her spiritually deadened state seeks only to project her own misery and corruption onto those around her. Like Solomon the Court sits in judgment between the two of us. But our story does not end as happily as the biblical one. “Justice” Roberts, like so many of his predecessors, far from actually delivering justice, has voted in favor of one last, fatal hack at the baby.
That is, by giving the Left what it wants, the court has killed the very thing our side has fought to preserve. The Left can now dance with perverse glee over the mutilated corpse of the thing they never loved or wanted in the first place.
So Madison and Jefferson’s republic ends with a vile savage taunting, “Take that, m*****f*****s!”
Now, maybe Mitt Romney will rise up like St. George to slay this new and terrifying dragon. But neither historical precedent nor Romney’s character gives us much hope in this regard.
“The People” will now get what they asked for in 2008.
BIG DAY
Hannon writes:
Dave T. writes:
On second thought, maybe this will be a good thing. Maybe the rulings that have come down this week will help conservatives wake up to the true nature of what this country has become. Nothing like crushed hopes to get the creative juices flowing sometimes.
Though tempting, this is only familiar wishful thinking. Was everyone expecting WW II to end with the wrap-up of every battle? Wishing maybe but not expecting. “Oh, that was horrible enough. Our enemies really mean business! Let’s quit it already”. The “soft war” bombs dropped on us this week by the SCOTUS are only volleys that will awaken some people to our terrible condition but these same folks are still reaching for the cold brew and the remote control. Most us, on both sides, absolutely do not know that we have been living the prelude to a war of beliefs for decades.
There is no “good thing” about it until we resist and begin to openly counter the offensive of dark Leftist forces.
Carol Iannone writes:
I called the SC to get a copy of the health care decision and when the person picked up I said I’d like a copy of the decision and she said we don’t send out copies. Imagine! I said yes you do, I always get them. So she put me through to someone else who took my name and number to send me a copy. Isn’t that something. But someone who didn’t know would go away without—to him who hath not, etc.
June 29
Alan Roebuck writes:
The recent Supreme Court ruling has confirmed a change that has been many years in the making. There is a corresponding change in nomenclature that will be necessary:
The United States of America shall henceforth be called the Union of American Socialist Republics. The American Union, for short. [LA replies: But “RepublicS” implies state’s rights and federalism!]
President Obama shall henceforth be called Comrade Obama, General Secretary of the Democratic Communist Party of the American Union.
The Supreme Court shall henceforth be called the Supreme Soviet.
Congress shall henceforth be called the Council of People’s Deputies of the American Union.
The New York Times shall now officially be called Pravda, and the Washington Post shall henceforth be called Izvestia.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2012 10:56 AM | Send