House of Eratosthenes

For months, progressives smugly labeled the legal challenges to ObamaCare as “silly” or even “frivolous.” Today their confidence must be severely shaken.

Late Monday afternoon in Pensacola, Fla., U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson delivered the second major judgment that the centerpiece of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—the “individual mandate” that forces Americans to buy health insurance whether or not they want it—is unconstitutional.
:
Consider the problems posed by the insurance mandate. The Obama administration argued that it was supported by the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. True enough, insurance is commerce, but not buying insurance is the antithesis of commerce. Commerce has always been understood as requiring economic activity. This was the rationale Judge Hudson adopted in striking down the individual mandate in the Virginia case.

Since this weekend, just before the ruling, I was treated to a dedicated lefty on the Hello-Kitty-of-Blogging who beat me upside the head (since I was the only one foolish enough to actually debate him on this) that this ruling is inconsequential because it WILL be overturned. Not quite so much that the ruling is wrong, that we need ObamaCare, millions and millions cannot get any access to health care blah blah blah…although there were some trace amounts of that. But it WILL be overturned, it doesn’t matter whether it’s right or wrong, I’ve proven my intellectual feebleness by expressing any sort of belief that the ruling means anything at all.

And oh by the way, my argument has been judged by these authoritative yet virtually anonymous busybodies on social media and found wanting.

But, back to the argument that it doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong, what the Constitution says, this WILL be overturned. Reminds me of the argument that it doesn’t matter if the Victory Mosque should or shouldn’t be built, it WILL be…hey, how’d that turn out. But the decision WILL be overturned. Wow, someone somewhere must have a sweetheart deal for Justice Kennedy.

I irritated the busybody and his sidekick with a hypothetical about a future America vigorously shoving a nascent socialized-medicine system through its early evolutionary stages…and running headlong into an “emergency” kidney shortage. If the government can do anything it wants, since it is “judicial activism” to merely declare anything at all unconstitutional…can the government order me to surrender one of my healthy kidneys? This met with two responses, both peppered with insults, each starkly contradictory to the other: Your hypothetical is unlikely, fantastic and stupid — and, who in pity fuck’s sake ever said your kidneys weren’t up for grabs from the very beginning?

All of which demonstrates two things.

One, those who have no love at all of liberty, principles of self-governance, self-direction, self-ownership and freedom…are viscerally resentful and angry toward those who do. It has been ever thus.

And two: Our lefties are experiencing a difficult time right now. Please be more considerate and gentle than I am.

“Please be more considerate and gentle than I am.”

Negative.

Didn’t note where I got this, but it states the situation more clearly than I can:

“The Left is more than ruthless, they are evil. They seek to rule, not by persuasion or honest debate, but by any means necessary. They revel in slander, character assassination and violence. They are steeped in hatred for all who oppose them. They seek to create and hold a monopoly on news media and editorial opinion; they support voter fraud and stolen elections; they prosecute political opponents on trumped-up charges in kangaroo courts. They have raised “the politics of personal destruction” to a high art form. Fairness, civility and common decency are unknown to them. I do not see the American Left as fellow citizens, I see them as sworn enemies for whom I feel little or no commonality or fraternity.

The Left has, however, finally convinced me of the truth of one of their key precepts: Politics is war by other means. They proved that in their orgy of hate and slander following the Arizona shootings. I shall not forget again.”

I’m fresh out of mercy.
- HoundOfDoom | 02/02/2011 @ 11:13
Fair enough, then. Consider my plea to be one for the dignity and self-restraint I have occasionally failed to show.
- mkfreeberg | 02/02/2011 @ 11:21
Oh, it’s not personal for me, dealing with these thugs is like taking out the trash now. So the dignity is intact. But any restraint that comes from trying to work with someone that just has a different POV, that may not have considered other alternatives? Gone.

And I didn’t get to this point by myself. Nope. They pushed me allll the way from there to here. They declared unrestricted (verbal) war. They pushed mountain after mountain of crap of all kinds onto me. They made me what I am today. You’d think they would be proud.

The best they can hope for is that it’ll be quick.

I’m speaking about verbal altercations, of course.
- HoundOfDoom | 02/02/2011 @ 12:53
I wish I could join you in this, HoundOfDoom. And I try to, in my small way — it’s fun to needle leftists by asking them to provide facts and arguments for their “ALL decent people agree that” -type assertions.

But I don’t think most folks can. I can’t do this nearly as much as I want to. In my case it’s because I work in academia, aka the Leftest Place on Earth — North Korean politburo meetings are hotbeds of free and open discussion by comparison — but I think it’s the case in a lot of businesses, for one simple reason: he who whines the loudest controls the discourse.

I realized the horrible truth of this a few years back, when an acquaintance of mine got into an altercation with some shrieking harpies. He’s actually a fairly conventional liberal, but he did have one heretical opinion that they absolutely couldn’t stomach. And they destroyed him. They were fuckin’ terminators: they couldn’t be bargained with, they couldn’t be reasoned with, and they absolutely would. not. stop. until they’d hounded him practically out of the department. The hit him with everything, up to the threat (at which point he cratered) of sexual harassment.

Again, this is academia, so the real world might not be quite that bad. But the mechanisms are all there, and all it takes is one unfounded accusation to stick and your whole world is ruined. How are we ever going to have an open discussion about things like the gender gap, say, if one party in the discussion can always bring the “hostile work environment” hammer down the minute she feels like she’s losing (or, worse, just doesn’t want to bother with having the discussion in the first place)?

This is why the left almost always wins. Bureaucracies only work when workplaces are harmonious, and so they create elaborate structures to enforce harmony. Since leftists are offended by almost everything, those enforcement structures err on the side of caution and begin enforcing mandatory leftism. And on and on the vicious circle spins…
- Severian | 02/02/2011 @ 14:24
[…] book: Wish it arrived twenty years earlier, I could’ve used something like that. Severian posted a comment, also on Groundhog Day, that said This is why the left almost always wins. Bureaucracies only work […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/03/2011 @ 07:04
Severian, sincerely sorry to hear about your friend. Having seen an unwarranted sexual harassment investigation up close, it’s a pretty nasty process.

Sadly, you make my point. The facsist left brooks no opposition, no deviation. And they will go to any length to crush those who fail to conform. And so we must meet force with force, or fail.

I don’t discuss sex, politics, or guns @ work – at all. Push me to the wall, and I’ll invite the pusher to call my report and have me tasked to discuss.

But catch me on the street, @ a party, in public, and try to shove that crap down my throat, and I’ll come back with every tool I have. BreitBart has done this to great effect, and we need to fire back at these little dictators and drive their poison out of our lives.
- HoundOfDoom | 02/03/2011 @ 09:03

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The Nuts and Bolts of the ObamaCare RulingWednesday, February 2nd, 2011

The Nuts and Bolts of the ObamaCare Ruling
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011