Rivkin and Casey: ObamaCare and the Limits of Government - WSJ.com

The overreach of the US government has hopefully reached its apex as the leviathan healthcare intervention will hopefully be stopped by the Supreme Court. The foundation of the US was an experiment in individual liberty and a limitation on the portfolio of powers and obligations of the central authority. For decades now, this very government has intruded upon the rights and responsibilities of the states and individuals and have almost completely upended the liberty of people to make choices in many aspects of their lives. The bottom line, is that the government through this legislation is naturally creating and environment will it can require you to OR not do anything that they deem to be in the best interest of the nation as a while....

If Congress can require individuals to buy or otherwise obtain and maintain health insurance simply because they may be said to impact commerce by their very existence, without regard to any particular activity in which they have chosen to engage, then there is no limit on federal power. For example, if Congress can require you to buy health insurance because your lack of insurance may, at some point in the future, impose costs on the wider economy, then on the same theory it can require the purchase (or sale) of virtually any good or service, since the failure to have or use the relevant product can always be said to have some economic impact.

The Commerce Clause in its creation by the founders WAS NOT a broad power that allowed the leviathan to do almost anything that they want. It was a restriction of states authority to restrict commerce amongst themselves. To consider this to be a right of the central government to intervene in markets particularly on the flimsy pretences that are being bandied about on this legislation is not only sill, stupid and juvenile but destructive. When the central government requires or mandates, the citizens have no choice and their liberty has been restricted. If a states does the same thing, a citizen can choose to move if it is too onerous. This market reaction and voting with one's feet keeps states from overstepping their own people but these limits do not exist when these things are foisted upon the citizenry nationally.

For those that argue that states can do these things that I so abhor, yes, they can and i will still abhor these market interventions. However, it is absolutely the right and intention of the federalist system that states can experiment and that they can succeed or fail. Then people have the choice of living there or leaving since Americans are a very mobile people. Bad decisions will eviscerate a state and survival will force these states to adjust to reality. However, bad decisions on the federal level can cause the whole nation to collapse as we see with Europe. The experiment there with socialism is a dismal failure and Europe 20 years from now will not look at all like it does now. And the error that happened there was the centralization of decision making and pan European regulation that crushed the spirit and nature of people there. They created an entitlement mentality that will take decades to squeeze out of the psyche of Europeans.

Rivkin and Casey: ObamaCare and the Limits of Government - WSJ.com