Larry Gude
Strung Out
...is long the battle cry of the left and a core tenet of centralized control and authority. Politicians, these days, are pretty much all about DOING something, ie, the government exerting more power and more control as opposed to being about getting government back into it's resrtaints. The current administration is very big on this and came to power on that argument, more is more but, it's not a new concept. They just take it a little more seriously than, perhaps, others and the best example of this is the ACA where they muscled it through with no help from the other party and took some unusual legislative steps in addition to some key bribes to get it done but, get it done they did.
The counter to this sort of mindset, the only good government is more government, is the Constitutional restraints on government; can we, constitutionally, do this and, if so, should we? I suppose, to be generous, the left starts with 'should we do this?' first but, from there, they don't ask 'if we should, can we?'. They say 'we should do this and, because we should, the constitution should not bar it.' That is a recipe, NOTHING being restricted, for every bit as much chaos as NO government at all. Sadly, the right now operates the same way.
Current conversation about the ACA is of the 'make the best of it' mindset and, I suppose that is practical. However, if you take the position that the ACA should never have been done in the first place AND that the constitution forbids it anyway, that should be all that you do, period, until you've repealed it. The Roberts court refused to bail the GOP out and do their job for them. Think what you will of that but, Roberts was also VERY clear; "As argued, this is Constitutional. You don't like it, you fix it." If the ACA becomes permanent, consider what would then also be allowable. If you, we can be compelled to buy this product and that service, there is no end. "Can we do it?" has been settled for ANYTHING so that everyone who comes along later has the blue print and the precedent that the only question is 'should we?'.
That leaves some pretty terrifying possibilities for exercising power rather than letting it go to waste.
The counter to this sort of mindset, the only good government is more government, is the Constitutional restraints on government; can we, constitutionally, do this and, if so, should we? I suppose, to be generous, the left starts with 'should we do this?' first but, from there, they don't ask 'if we should, can we?'. They say 'we should do this and, because we should, the constitution should not bar it.' That is a recipe, NOTHING being restricted, for every bit as much chaos as NO government at all. Sadly, the right now operates the same way.
Current conversation about the ACA is of the 'make the best of it' mindset and, I suppose that is practical. However, if you take the position that the ACA should never have been done in the first place AND that the constitution forbids it anyway, that should be all that you do, period, until you've repealed it. The Roberts court refused to bail the GOP out and do their job for them. Think what you will of that but, Roberts was also VERY clear; "As argued, this is Constitutional. You don't like it, you fix it." If the ACA becomes permanent, consider what would then also be allowable. If you, we can be compelled to buy this product and that service, there is no end. "Can we do it?" has been settled for ANYTHING so that everyone who comes along later has the blue print and the precedent that the only question is 'should we?'.
That leaves some pretty terrifying possibilities for exercising power rather than letting it go to waste.