SCOTUS: Taxes now trump freedom

The importance of the Supreme Court decision regarding Obamacare lies far less in what it does to health care, than in what it does to basic American concepts of freedom and rule of law. John Roberts, in “Alice in Wonderland” fashion, has destroyed both. Although holding that the Congress does not have the authority to force one to buy a product, Roberts held that the government can coerce one to buy that product through a new and now unlimited taxation power.

The illogic of this is obvious to any child who has reached the age of reason. Only a sophisticated thinker, engaging deeply in the powers of sophistry, could avoid seeing a contradiction. Roberts has done this by blurring the distinction between a tax and a penalty. A tax is a fee levied by a government on an activity, a product or income. A penalty, on the other hand, is a punishment imposed for doing something forbidden or for failing to do something that is mandated. Anyone who has received a traffic ticket for failing to travel under the speed limit understands the distinction.

The true frightening import of the decision is that the taxing power of the federal government now trumps all the freedoms that the Constitution guaranteed. With this decision, the Supreme Court has essentially rendered itself a useless, rubber stamp appendage of the Congress which pays its salary.

BRYANT BUSHLING

Coeur d’Alene