http://tinyurl.com/ygkteme

 by Doctor Zero

Senator Roland Burris (D-Illinois) was recently asked by CNS News to
specify which part of the Constitution authorizes Congress to legally
compel individuals to purchase health insurance, a key component of
the last dozen versions of the twelve hundred page ObamaCare proposal.
Burris replied:

"Well, that's under certainly the laws of the--protect the health,
welfare of the country. That's under the Constitution. We're not even
dealing with any constitutionality here. Should we move in that
direction? What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health,
welfare and the defense of the country."

This is not a new sentiment. Burris is stating one of the core
principles of American liberalism: the belief that the Constitution
lays out a series of general directives, rather than imposing specific
restrictions on the power of government... as if "promote the general
welfare" and the interstate commerce clause were deliberately written
into the Constitution as secret ingredients that would vaporize the
rest of the document and give the government unlimited power, once
some future generation of clever liberals combined them.

Many conservatives respond to the occasional RINO stampede, such as
the one which tore through New York congressional district 23 in the
recent special election, by suggesting the Republicans should advance
a solid conservative platform, and require all candidates to swear
allegiance to it. I understand this desire, but I've always been
uncomfortable with the notion of threatening candidates with
excommunication, unless they agree to support a list of positions
stapled to their foreheads.  We should all be able to come together
around the defense of the Constitution, however. We need no other set
of principles to guide us in repairing the damage of the past century.
If the government is not restrained by loyalty to the Constitution,
then its citizens are not free.

Freedom cannot exist in the absence of law. People living in a state
of anarchy are not free. They live under the random tyranny of any
warlord, gang, or predator who can overpower them. They also live
within the prison of their own distrust for their fellow men. A code
of clear, fairly administered laws enhances our ability to trust, and
cooperate with, people we don't know personally. Of course, laws
restrict our actions, by punishing us for engaging in illegal
activities... but they also enhance our freedom, by allowing us to work
more easily with each other, and trade with confidence.

You submit to a fairly involved code of laws, backed up by steep
financial penalties and the threat of deadly force, every time you
climb into your car. Those very same laws make it possible for you to
drive long distances quickly and easily -- compared to foot or horse
travel, anyway. Without those laws, the fast-moving and complex system
of roads and highways would become so deadly that everyone would be
afraid to use them.

This same principle applies to government. A lawless government is a
tyranny, and its citizens are not free. It doesn't matter if the
lawless state was reached through a brutal thirst for power, or high-
minded compassionate ideals. We wouldn't indulge reckless defiance of
the traffic laws by someone in a mad rush to make a large donation to
the local Salvation Army chapter. Even ambulance drivers are expected
to obey certain rules of the road, and would not be allowed to run
down pedestrians in their race to the local emergency room.

Government cannot derive its legitimacy entirely from the approval of
a democratic majority, as asserted by the demand that President Obama
should be granted virtually limitless power over the lives of American
citizens because he won the last election. This would be no less
offensive to liberty if Obama had won with seventy, eighty, or ninety
percent of the popular vote, instead of 52%. The need to assemble
majority support cannot be the sole limit on the power of the State.
If the male castaways of "Gilligan's Island" decide to hold a purely
democratic vote to enslave the women, then Mrs. Howell, Ginger, and
Mary Ann are in deep trouble.
Some Democrats have responded to the Tea Party movement by whining
that noisy minorities should not be allowed to interfere with
governance. These are the same people who assert the power to
nationalize the health insurance industry because 20, 30, or 47
million people lack adequate insurance. Freedom cannot be reduced to a
struggle between whichever noisy minority puts on the biggest
demonstration in Washington D.C. How much time, energy, and money has
already been expended, fighting over a gigantic, ever-changing health
care bill that never should have existed in the first place?

A strict adherence to the Constitution would "promote the general
welfare" far more effectively than any program cobbled together in the
back rooms of Congress, by saving us the waste of money and passion
expended in arguing about those programs. A properly respected
Constitution would be a peerless tool for bringing people together,
because it would prevent government from tearing them into warring
factions by offering fabulously expensive benefits to some, at the
expense of others. It would reduce the level of anger and venom in our
society, because no one would have to fight a desperate last-ditch
battle to preserve his liberty in the voting booth. It would improve
the civic pride of citizens, by giving them meaningful input into
local policies, instead of demanding they submit to the agenda of
distant politicians they will never be allowed to vote against, from
states they might never even visit.

For too long, the Left has interpreted the Constitution as an ever-
expanding warrant for the arrest of all those who dissent from its
agenda. The glorious truth of that incredible document is exactly the
opposite: it was designed to restrain the central government, with
chains equally impervious to threats and pleading. A just government
has very few laws its citizens cannot change by voting locally, or
escape by moving to a different state. It cannot require the level of
trust that free citizens extend only to each other. Reasoned
deliberation can never involve blind votes on thousand-page bills
written last week.