Saturday, March 24, 2012

Pundit Press: America at a Crossroad

Pundit Press: America at a Crossroad

Most of the critical founding ideals set forth in our Constitution originated long before the Enlightenment writers. The source of these ideals is the limit on the power of the centralized governing entity – the King – in favor of the decentralized governing bodies who made decisions inside their own fiefs – the feudal Lords.

Seems weird to think of it in this way, but this is really where it all came from. Winston Churchill, writing in The Birth of Britain, speaks of Magna Carta as follows:

"Throughout the document it is implied that here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it. . . . Now for the first time the King himself is bound by the law. The root principle was destined to survive across the generations and rise paramount long after the feudal background of 1215 had faded in the past. The Charter became in the process of time an enduring witness that the power of the [central government] was not absolute."

Today, Magna Carta is embodied in the American constitutional approach to power which is represented by the grant to the central government of only a limited series of discrete authorities. It is a concept created by law – a law which is above the federal government and which even it must not break.

To eliminate the limits on the exercise of centralized power under the Commerce Clause as the Obamacare statute endeavors to do while providing no replacement limited guidance upon which the judiciary can adhere – either in law or in logic – essentially disavows the idea of a limited series of discrete authorities granted to the federal government. It disavows the existence of a critical law governing the balance of power which is above the federal government and which even it must not break.

In so doing, Obamacare in a sense disavows stability itself.