Yuval, Andy, Ed and others were quick this morning to point out the shell game of the non-compromise compromise that the Obama administration is unilaterally imposing for the HHS mandate. Anybody who falls for it is indeed either a fool or a tool, and the only possible answer is General McAuliffe’s reply when asked to surrender at the Battle of the Bulge: Nuts.
But there’s a larger issue than goes beyond the usual Lefty Whipsaw, and that’s the sheer unconstitutional effrontery behind this week’s flap. Obama’s feeling his oats, no question, making illegal appointments, simply ignoring swaths of the Bill of Rights and complaining that the Constitution won’t allow him to rule by diktat — yet.
This “compromise” is no compromise at all, but simply more deceit. It’s another attempt to get Hussein’s camel’s nose under the tent — although by now the dromedary is not only in the tent, but rampaging around freely — and insert the federal government into every facet of American life, courtesy of the Commerce Clause and a legion of leftist sophists masquerading as lawyers. All while maintaining electoral viability as the Tribune of the Folks.
Wearing his media-bestowed Tarnhelm, Obama is all smiles and sweet reasonableness while he sends out his hatchet women such as Kathleen Sebelius to insult a sizable portion of the citizenry for no reason other than Yes We Can. But there comes a time when the American people — who are the real custodians of the Constitution, Marbury v. Madison to the contrary notwithstanding — simply have to stand up and say: Nuts.
Back during Watergate, the phony pious Left used to whine that “we’re a nation of laws, not men” as they gleefully gutted Richard Nixon’s presidency. Well, nuts to that too. Except for the Ten Commandments, laws are made by men, not men by laws. The implicit fascism of the Obamacare law needs to be civilly resisted and legislatively overturned, not piecemeal but wholesale, the way slavery and Prohibition were; just for laughs, if you want to see widespread civil disobedience in action — against a Constitutional amendment, no less — check out the years 1920–1933.
In Michael Mann’s great movie, The Last of the Mohicans, there’s this quintessentially American exchange between Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a British officer:
British Officer: You call yourself a patriot, and loyal subject to the Crown?
Hawkeye: I do not call myself subject to much at all.
That’s the kind of men the country used to be made of: citizens, not subjects. It’s high time they and their representatives in Congress stepped up and said: Nuts, without waiting for the Supreme Court to do it for them.