The healthcare legislation which has recently passed the U.S. Senate, unanimously opposed by Republicans, reveals that what inspires today's Democrat party is pure tyranny.
While Congress has power granted to it by the U.S. Constitution to tax and to spend, and to regulate commerce between the states, it does not have the power to require commerce. But this is what the healthcare legislation does: it requires you to engage in health care commerce by buying health insurance. If you wish to avoid buying automobile insurance, you may do so as long as you do not drive the car. Not so with the health care legislation. You will either buy the insurance, or be fined.
The legislation also violates the constitutional principle of the general welfare. Some states are relieved of their duty to contribute to Medicaid under the Senate version, which gives them an unfair advantage at the expense of all the other states who do. It's bad enough that special interest groups dominate our politics. This legislation makes states themselves a party to it, and erodes the very concept of the Union.
A third problem has to do with state sovereignty. It is one thing for states to comply with federal requirements in order to receive, for example, highway funds in exchange for passing speed limit regulations. It is entirely another to be required to pass legislation and regulations to comply with the health care bill, and to be threatened to have it done for them by the feds if they don't. This is already rankling a number of states, who are toying with the idea of health care nullification.
That it is the Democrats who are for all this stuff should frighten the American people. The Democrats may like to think of themselves as the party of new ideas, but those ideas are as despotic as they are unconstitutional. They should be run out of town on a rail, preferably in tar and feathers.
