ObamaCare on the docket

The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments this week on the single gravest internal threat to individual liberty that I have seen in my lifetime: the now notorious piece of legislation generally referred to as ObamaCare. National Review Online has a good rundown on the constitutional issues.

It is a good time, perhaps, to recollect that a Supreme Court ruling is not like a law of physics: we are not inextricably bound by a SCOTUS interpretation of the Constitution in anything like the same way that we are subject to the law of gravity. If the justices do not overthrow ObamaCare – or the main props without which it would collapse of its own weight – then a conservative congress may toss out the legislation, or refuse to fund its implementation. With respect to the greater danger – that the SCOTUS may interpret the Commerce Clause or other parts of the Constitution in such a way as to effectively rewrite both the document and the traditional relationship between the American citizen and the government - there is always the path of a constitutional convention open to us for crystalizing the concept of liberty and stripping the offending clauses of their capacity for being abused by the state. I’m sure there are other alternative strategies, as well, that may ultimately come under consideration in proportion to the failure of our elected representatives to halt and reverse our country’s march toward socialism. We shall see in the fullness of time.