We Watch As The Berlin Wall Falls

Jun 29, 2012 | by Laz A. Mataz

[Lazamataz]

I have always wondered how it felt to be a committed Communist in the former Soviet Union, when the system collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell.

Now I know. 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States of America tore up the social contract between America and her citizens. They concluded that it was legal and Constitutional to force a citizen to buy a government-sanctioned product or service.

This flies squarely in the face of everything it is to be a free citizen, and totally upends the concept of free markets. Armed with this ruling, the government may now decree that every citizen purchase a particular car, a particular item of clothing.... or, harkening back to the 1930's German experience, a particular book (Of course, even Hitler saw that it would be unreasonable to force people to buy his book, so he gave them for free to newlyweds and soldiers at the front).

Forced commerce, that is what it may reasonably be called. In what way does this differ from Central Planning, the famously failed Soviet model?

Many pundits have noted that this will likely hurt Obama and his minions in Congress and the Senate in November. While this is possibly true, does it matter? Does it change the fact that the Supreme Court has drastically altered the social contract between America's government and her people? Party control waxes. Party control wanes. But SCOTUS rulings take decades to reverse, on the rare occasions they are reversed at all. All it takes is one bad election, and the government can now decree we must own certain products and services.

We will see all sorts of freedom-limiting compelled purchases. Obviously, each person needs burial insurance, right? And liability insurance on a personal level, this is reasonable, isn't it? After all, suppose you accidently harm someone? And OF COURSE, each person who wishes to post their opinion on the internet... they will clearly need 'slander and libel' insurance, in case they should speak ill of another. All these 'insurances' are intended as new taxes, only, and in the last case, shall be created to expressly restrict free speech.

In light of this ruling, perhaps the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty needs to be updated:

  

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe in a specifically decreed manner by an all-powerful Federal government,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the door that is mandated that every citizen own (c.f., 2013's HR 5695, the Congressional Golden Door Possession Act)!"  

I asked at the beginning of this editorial, what it must have felt like, as a committed Communist, to see the Soviet Union fall. Well, now I know, for I -- someone committed to freedom and the American ideal embodied in the Constitution -- watched America begin the final leg of it's fall on June 28, 2012, at 10:00AM Eastern Standard Time.

[Lazamataz]

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[DTogo]

watched America begin the final leg of it's fall on June 28, 2012

Perhaps the fall is necessary in order to be helped back up again.

[Liberty Valance]

[Lurker]

There are a lot of Rand haters around here, but that piece from Atlas Shrugs is dead on the money. Well done, Laz.

[reagan_fanatic]

It was a nice run while it lasted. I feel sorry for all of those patriots before us who fought and died to preserve liberty and freedom for this nation, only to have it whither away under the careful supervision of our marxist-in-Chief, President Barack Hussein Obama.

Socialism has never worked where its been tried - it’s too bad that there are so many Americans totally ignorant of that fact.

[Lazamataz]

I didn’t find that quote, a dear friend did.

[SueRae]

Sad and disgusted. I haven’t been this angry/depressed since the ‘08 election.

I think I’ll go swimming before big brother decides to regulate/tax the pool.

[KarlInOhio]

Or else someone watching the Berlin Wall being built. You had some hope that you could become free, but now the boot heel of government is stomping down on your face.

[Lazamataz]

When England went merrily insane, and began with all kinds of odd legislation, I wondered out loud to what gain that they defeated the Nazis in World War II.

Where America will be, a mere 5 to 10 years hence ... I wonder, to what gain that we defeated the Nazis in that same war.

[Valentine Michael Smith]

Nice job Mr. Mataz.

[iceskater]

I weep.

Like I wept when that crap sandwich of a bill was passed.

[ctdonath2]

See #9. It’s not that the wall is coming down, it’s that the wall is going up. Let’s get to tearing it down NOW before they set up the sentries & dogs.

[exit82]

Thanks, Laz.

I am truly out of words to express myself at this massive betrayal—by the Legislative, the Executive and now the Judicial branches of our Imperial Government.

We have just over four months to save this country.

If that fails, the only recourse is to obtain new guards for our liberties, and the cost to do that will be unimaginable.

[KarlInOhio]

I think I’ll go swimming before big brother decides to regulate/tax the pool.

Too late if it's not your own private pool. You better get in the swim before it is shut down to comply with the ADA requirement that every public pool must have a pool life for the handicapped or be closed.

[KarlInOhio]

oops. To fix the typo:

pool life->pool lift

[Lazamataz]

Aw crap. Moderator, I left out some really important points. Could you imbed them after this paragraph, so that it reads:

Many pundits have noted that this will likely hurt Obama and his minions in Congress and the Senate in November. While this is possibly true, does it matter? Does it change the fact that the Supreme Court has drastically altered the social contract between America's government and her people? Party control waxes. Party control wanes. But SCOTUS rulings take decades to reverse, on the rare occasions they are reversed at all. All it takes is one bad election, and the government can now decree we must own certain products and services.

We will see all sorts of freedom-limiting compelled purchases. Obviously, each person needs burial insurance, right? And liability insurance on a personal level, this is reasonable, isn't it? After all, suppose you accidently harm someone? And OF COURSE, each person who wishes to post their opinion on the internet... they will clearly need 'slander and libel' insurance, in case they should speak ill of another. All these 'insurances' are intended as new taxes, only, and in the last case, shall be created to expressly restrict free speech.

I know, it's asking a lot, but please give me a pass. I'm really depressed with this ruling.

[iceskater]

... I'm really depressed with this ruling.

Me too.

[Lazamataz]

It’s natural to be depressed when the core social contracts of your country are torn up.

[Red Badger]

MENDING WALL
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”