This will not be a long diary. I am watching C-spam and learning about the Virginia's Attorney General plan to challenge the HCR bill's mandate as being able to supersede a (new?) Virginia Law that prohibits such a federal mandate...
Gee, I wonder how the SCOTUS will break on this one? My guess is that they will not only find in favor of Virginia, but that they'll declare that Virginia can go ahead and secede from the union if they like. I mean, after selecting Presidents this would seem like a logical next step for them.
But here is my real problem: as much as I am repulsed by the gang of four (plus Kennedy), in this case I believe I would have to agree that such a mandate should be unconstitutional.
I have been a lifelong liberal by anyone's measure. In recent years I have felt more and more inclined towards libertarian thinking. (Flame away if you like). And while I do not believe that the kind of "centrism" the pundits claim Obama's direction represents is any sort of good thing, I do believe that there must and should be a balance between anarchy, which I would strongly prefer to totalitarianism, and the kind of authoritarianist style of government that I think mandates like the one proposed in the HCR bill are certainly a platform for.
A mandate to pay income taxes may have started the ball rolling. And while I believe that growing populations present problems for civilizations that we have not yet been able to recognize at all well enough - even as we have been unable to avoid getting to, and in many places around the world, beyond the carrying capacities of the environments we inhabit - I do think that Social Security and Medicare were both necessary and effective measures at the time they were conceived. What I mean is that when populations are relatively smaller, it is much easier for government to try and effectively oversee issues that must fall under their purview. And as populations grow beyond numbers that allow for effective government oversight (and as technologies change, making matters more and less difficult from time to time) then the flaws in things like mandates become easier and easier to see.
When we got to mandates for carrying for-profit auto liability insurance, and for wearing safety belts I knew that things were going in the wrong direction. The government could much more easily oversee and mandate actions from corporations. The government could easily have forced auto makers to make safety belt devices that operate without the consumer having to make a decision about it, but rather we are told that we will put the belts on or we will be punished.
I do not want to be threatened into acting by anyone or any government. We need to be smarter, not tougher. There could certainly be smart and effective ways of extending health coverage to all Americans without a federal mandate to purchase for-profit health insurance. Our principles have been too far compromised as we have looked for, and allowed government to assume more and more responsibility for our safety and maintenance.
OSHA is a good example of how government should approach a social issue like work safety, or as we are discussing now, health care reform. Imagine if instead of OSHA's requirements on businesses to provide safe working places we had instead decided to force workers to purchase occupational safety insurance. It might not be the best analogy. But the point is that government mandates on citizens should be avoided as a matter of course.
Now we are lead to believe that we either have to accept this unbelievably convoluted bill, or else we are heartless bastards who want the poor and sick to die soon. The Twilight Zone thinks we are insane.