Gilded Chains Are Still Chains

That SCOTUS upheld the linchpin of ObamaCare should not have come as a surprise. Nor should the reasoning behind their decision. Despite denials, obfuscations, and outright lies offered to the general public during health-care debates, President Obama and Democrat Congressional leaders successfully argued before the highest court that the individual mandate was a tax. This very outcome was foretold by Robert Yates, author of Anti-Federalist paper known as Brutus VI:

"The general legislature will be empowered to lay any tax they chuse, [sic] to annex any penalties they please to the breach of their revenue laws; and to appoint as many officers as they may think proper to collect the taxes... And the courts of law, which they will be authorized to institute, will have cognizance of every case arising under the revenue laws, the conduct of all the officers employed in collecting them; and the officers of these courts will execute their judgments.” 

So, the tax that wasn't a tax is really a tax after all, and the treasure of all productive citizens is subject to plunder. Additionally, the IRS is free to continue expansion plans authorized under ObamaCare in order to satisfy increased financial demands brought on by the act. Something Yates also warned about in his essay Brutus V:

"[T]he power to lay and collect has great latitude; it will lead to the passing a vast number of laws, which may affect the personal rights of the citizens of the states, expose their property to fines and confiscation, and put their lives in jeopardy: it opens a door to the appointment of a swarm of revenue and excise officers to pray [sic] upon the honest and industrious part of the community, eat up their substance, and riot on the spoils of the country.” 

There was another essay of that time, written and signed by twenty-one dissenters after the Pennsylvania Convention ratified the new constitution. In The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania to their Constituents, they listed among their objections, the secretive, back room dealings and scare tactics employed at the Convention by those in favor of ratification, very much akin to those used by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi while crafting ObamaCare:

"Whilst the gilded chains were forging in the secret conclave, the meaner instruments of despotism without, were busily employed in alarming the fears of the people with dangers which did not exist, and exciting their hopes of greater advantages from the expected plan than even the best government on earth could produce....” 

Now we are faced with a decision on how to proceed concerning this Constitutional, yet arguably bad law. The answer is clear. We must, as Yates suggested, “... rise up, and, with a strong hand, resist and prevent the execution of constitutional laws.” We must do everything possible, and permissible under our Constitution, to unseat and replace those who would burden our Nation with such bad law. To do otherwise means acceptance of those gilded chains.


Dennis P. O'Neil