Any government at any level that arrogates unto itself the power to dictate to you how you must spend your money on penalty of prison is your slave-master.
If RomneyCare in Massachusetts required everyone to spend 100% of their income on broccoli or go to prison, how is that functionally different than requiring people to buy health care?
If a government can direct your life’s energy (earnings) at their whim, you have no freedom. You have serfdom at best, and slavery at worst.
I care not a whit whether the man with the gun to my head is from the White House or the State House.
Federalism is not an argument for turning the ownership of the government by the people into the ownership of the people by the government.
“Any government at any level that arrogates unto itself the power to dictate to you how you must spend your money on penalty of prison is your slave-master.”
Nice evasion of the point.