Europe Is Baffled by the U.S. Supreme Court

The Atlantic Wire ^ | 4.5.2012 | John Hudson

[TexasNative2000]

Europe is scratching its head over possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down President Obama's signature legislative achievement. As the judiciary and the Obama administration trade legal barbs over the high court's authority, the idea that health care coverage, largely considered a universal right in Europe, could be deemed an affront to liberty is baffling.

"The Supreme Court can legitimately return Obamacare?" asks a headline on the French news site 9 POK . The article slowly walks through the legal rationale behind the court's right to wipe away Congress's legislation. "Sans précédent, extraordinaires" reads the article. In the German edition of The Financial Times, Sabine Muscat is astonished at Justice Antonin Scalia's argument that if the government can mandate insurance, it can also require people to eat broccoli. "Absurder Vergleich" reads the article's kicker, which in English translates to, "Absurd Comparison." In trying to defeat the bill, Muscat writes, Scalia is making a "strange analogy [to] vegetables."

[Jack Hydrazine]

There’s are reasons why I can them Euro-peons! Here’s one of them.

[prairiebreeze]

If the Euros are scratching their heads, it’s a sure sign the Founders were absolutely correct in their approach.

[muawiyah]

A common view at the time ~ that the US and the Russians were both occupying Europe for the same reason, and that was to disestablish Germany and German culture in a long term effort to repress their ambition to achieve dominance through military conquest.

The big problem the Russians had and still have is they are DOWNWIND so whatever kind of war takes place upwind of them they don't want nukes used in the West.

That pretty well explained their vast investment in armored vehicles.

[smokingfrog]

Some of us are more recent arrivals. But yeah, we wanted to get away from all of that cr@p.

[SeeSharp]

He told me that the Germans were the real problem.

There used to be a slogan at the State Department that went "America in, Russia out, Germany down".

[laweeks]

Aren’t these the inhabitants of a continent that had to be bailed out of two world wars?

Aren’t these the inhabitants of a continent that are giving up their God-given rights to the muzzies?

Aren’t these the inhabitants of a continent that has forced its inhabitants to give up their weapons?

Even Benny Hill, over 20-30 years ago, made fun of the stupid health care the British had . . . and it’s gotten worse.

[loveliberty2]

They might need to go back in British history and read how very well Edmund Burke understood what he called "the spirit of liberty" among the Americans.

In his "Speech on Conciliation" (1775), he documented the remarkable economic success in the colonies, the freedom which existed there, and gave his predictions about the future of the then-colonists.

And, that was before the Declaration of Independence and 1787 Constitution!

To understand the U. S. Constitution's strict limitations on government power, its structuring of a "People's" written Constitution for dividing, separating, checking, balancing, and enumerating the powers "the People" would grant to government, and the reasons why this President cannot just command his Partisan majority in Congress and laws will be rubber-stamped by a Supreme Court is to understand why America has enjoyed over 200 years of freedom!

"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant—they have been cheated; asleep—they have been surprised; divided—the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ... the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government, they should watch over it ... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free."

So-called "progressives" understand the "divided" part of Madison's cautionary words, but the rest of us seem to ignore the rest of Madison's statement.

Might it have something to do with our not having been "well-instructed" in the ideas of freedom?

Edmund Burke, in his 1775 "Speech on Conciliation," observed the following "spirit" in the founding generations:

"Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." (Underlining added for emphasis)

Burke also declared to the Parliament that what he called the colonists' "fierce spirit of liberty" also must be attributed to their "religion," "under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty."

[Right Wing Assault]

"Sans précédent, extraordinaires"

Mais oui, ha, ha!. Eet mott be ay good teeng fahr you to raid sowm istoree, Frainch doods. Uzzairwoz you weel luke stoopeed aygain, non?

[Gay State Conservative]

Although some of my ancestors might not agree the thing for which *I* am *genuinely* grateful to the British is their having driven several of said ancestors out of Europe.

Nobody with all of his/her marbles could possibly *want* to live in today's Europe.

[Vince Ferrer]

Not only that, but the majority will cheer when it is overturned. That will really spin their heads.

Hey Europe, who went bankrupt first?

[Nowhere Man]

Way, way back in the very early 1970s, I was stationed in Germany in a unit that patrolled the east west German border. I asked my old first sergeant, who was in Korea and Vietnam, how we expected to defend against the Soviets short of nukes. He said, that is the only way we can defend. Without the nukes we are simply immediately dead. He then said that we were basically wasting our time in Germany. He said that eventually Europe would once againt be like it used to be. This guy was very smart. Actually had a law degree and got it while in the Army going through night schools in the states. He told me that the Germans were the real problem. He said really that we were there to keep the Germans from starting WW III. He said it was just in their blood. He also hated the French. He had nothing good to stay about the French. Always spoke of them like dogs. He said eventually we would be fighting another war over there. He is probably long gone fromt his earth by now, but his words still ring in my ears when I see all this Eurowinnie crap.

I've heard of this too, there is a film made in 1945 that backs up what you just said:

Your Job in Germany

[bigbob]

Word to Euros - it’s called balance of powers, bitches... but that’s something you people who grew up with kings and queens and dukes and earls and all that rot wouldn’t understand.

[SampleMan]

Of course they are baffled. Although somewhat free, they have never been close to totally free, and they do not at all gather the importance of the individual over the state.

[Stingray51]

The German constitutional court has stepped in to set theorhetical limits on (but not actually stop) Germany’s participation in various European schemes to save the Euro. So they do understand the concept of judicial review. I think it is just that in Europe, the elites are in such lockstep that there is an ingrained certainty that the courts will not flatly stop something important to the ruling elites, whereas in the US there always remains at least some chance.

[SampleMan]

Talk to a European about neo nazis or the klan and their heads explode at the idea that allowing them to exist in the open is a good thing.

They are fine with radical Islamists and communists though.

[bubman]

I agree and disagree with your statement. This article is but a kneejerk reaction by the elite left and in no way represent a collective european perception of what is a uniquely american exercise. Most europeans simply do not understand the principles of checks and balances. Those that pretend to do so cannot reconcile the mechanism with their european stucture of gov’t and it’s cradle to grave welfare state. It’s simply does not compute. A french national once told me that to most in europe, america is where the impossible happens and europe is were the possible never happens. Pretty good observation if you ask me.

[Billthedrill]

I would be a lot more concerned that there is no similar mechanism in Europe. It explains a good deal about the EU.

"Wasn't the point to make sure the richest and most powerful nation on the planet could protect its own people, as other nations do?" he wrote. "If Americans are promised not just liberty but life and happiness, is there not a constitutional right to affordable healthcare?"

I hope the fellow wasn't paid to write that drivel. It is, of course, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are the object of governments instituted among men as proposed in the Declaration of Independence, but there is nothing in it, or in that pesky Constitution, that details a "right" to healthcare, and only an ignoramus would reason that there is. There is, however, a good deal about the rule of law. And that is the issue here.

What is really astonishing European commentators is not the fact that the Court might declare certain features of 0bamacare unconstitutional, it's the depth and breadth of the national fury that 0bama is now receiving for suggesting that the Court cannot. 0bama may be a five-star international celebrity, star of stage and screen, but in government he is only the President. And the very concept "only" the President seems to be the real point of confusion. It appears to be confusing 0bama and his throne-kissers most of all.

The real damage done is to the illusion that capturing the Presidency empowers anyone to single-handedly transform the country under any fundamental lines, an illusion that was swept into office with this political and intellectual fraud and now has dissipated like a stinking swamp miasma in a force ten storm. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

It is, of course, entirely possible that 0bamacare will survive the gantlet of judicial review, although it looks like a sucker bet at the moment. There is another review coming in November. That one is provided for in the Declaration as well, in the section that begins "that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends..." Our European cousins might want to review the rest of that particular sentence.

[xkaydet65]

They should go back and find a vid of Alistair Cooke’s series America from 40 years ago. The Supreme Court was in his opinion America’s strongest defender of Liberty and what distinguished our effort at creating and defending a democratic republic from all the efforts of Europeans. By their statements,equating life with healthcare it is abundantly clear that Europe still has no concept of life and liberty. Neither do the progressives who inhabit our coasts.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Europe has enjoyed America’s military protection which allowed them to direct more spending on social programs. That seems to be coming to a halt at least in the most vulnerable nations. Setting aside the unconstitutional aspect of Obamacare, we simply cannot be both the worlds military AND pay “boatloads” of money for “free” medical care.

[goodnesswins]

Guess those Europeans have not YET figured out why some of my ancestors LEFT!