What Happens When Prayer Doesn't Work?

"To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well." -- Gospel of St. Luke 6:29

On Sept. 1, Pope Francis from St. Peter's Square in an address called "Angelus," said:

"War never again! Never again war! Peace is a precious gift, which must be promoted and protected. ...

"With utmost firmness I condemn the use of chemical weapons ... There is a judgment of God and of history upon our actions which are inescapable! Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence ...

"I exhort the international community to make every effort to promote clear proposals for peace in that country without further delay, a peace based on dialogue and negotiation, for the good of the entire Syrian people...

"What can we do to make peace in the world? As Pope John said, it pertains to each individual to establish new relationships in human society under the mastery and guidance of justice and love....

"To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria. ...

"Let us ask Mary to help us to respond to violence."

To try to end the civil war in Syria, Pope Francis has "exhorted the international community," invited for "dialogue and negotiations," called for the "establishment of new relationships," "proclaimed ... a day of fasting and prayer," and asked "Mary to help us."

So is anybody in Syria listening? Assad? Al-Nursa, al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood? And what happens to innocent men, women and children if Assad or the opposing side goes on shooting, bombing or attacking them with sarin gas? (Sarin produces death within one minute after direct ingestion of a lethal dose, by suffocation caused by lung muscle paralysis).

So what if the pope's exhortations, negotiations and prayers don't work?

In the years just before and during WWII, Adolf Hitler embarked upon a campaign of mass murder and extermination. Six million -- one million children, two million women and three million men -- of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe were murdered by Hitler and his S.S., most in Hitler's death camps.

In addition, the Nazis killed between 220,000 and 500,000 of the Romani People (Gypsies). Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi hands died by starvation, mistreatment or execution. About 345,000 Czechs died, and nearly 600,000 Yugoslavs. And as many as a 110,000 mentally ill or disabled were exterminated. Had Hitler won, it would have been even worse.

Heinrich Himmler's "General Plan East" was approved by Hitler in the summer of 1942. It called for exterminating, expelling, or enslaving most or all Slavs from their native lands so as to make "living space" for German settlers. The plan was to be carried out over a period of 20 to 30 years.

General Plan East was a plan to reduce indigenous populations in the defeated states: Poles by 85 percent; Belarusians by 75 percent; Ukrainians by 65 percent; Czechs by 50 percent. These reductions would be produced by "extermination through labor" or decimation through malnutrition, disease and controls on reproduction. The Soviet people, once the USSR was defeated, would suffer a similar fate.

Before WWII, Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, "negotiated" the destruction of the Czech state to appease Hitler and prevent WWII. Before and during WWII, countless millions prayed for peace. During the Holocaust, the Jews prayed that God would save them. God didn't stop the war, or prevent the Holocaust -- unless he acted through the Allied armies! Nothing short of destroying the German war machine stopped Hitler. Indeed, what happened in Hitler's concentration (extermination) camps led many to conclude that "God was Dead," or that if He existed at all, He was useless in the face of such evil, or even worse: He didn't care.

Winston Churchill's view differed from the Pope's.

"The Sermon on the Mount is the last word in Christian ethics. ... Still, it is not on these terms that Ministers assume their responsibilities of guiding the state. Their duty is first so to deal with other nations as to avoid strife and war and to eschew aggression in all its forms, whether for nationalistic or ideological objects.

"But ... if the circumstances are such as to warrant it, force may be used.
"And if this be so, it should be used under the conditions which are most favorable. There is no merit in putting off a war for a year, if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win ..."

The pope's call for prayer and fasting is noble. But if militant Islam has its way, there won't be a pope; and there won't be any Christianity. One only has to look at the Middle East over the last 1300 years to see how Christians have fared. At the time of Mohammed, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and all of North Africa were Christian. Today, the last Christian remnants in Egypt, Syria and other Muslim states are being exterminated.

Against a dictator willing to use sarin gas against children, pacifism affords no protection. It is one thing to be slapped on the cheek; it is another thing entirely to have your neighborhood turned into a gas chamber. When prayers of the blessed peacemakers aren't doing the job, a resort to force may be the only alternative short of martyrdom.

Posted Online:  Sept. 20, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

When Social Justice Degenerates into Injustice -- Theft?

When I was a young law student, our Natural Law professor at Notre Dame introduced us to the concept of social justice. He explained that "social justice is the duty of every society to provide for the basic needs of every citizen."

But his definition troubled me. I could not understand why society has a duty to provide for the basic needs of people capable of providing for themselves, and I asked, "was there a corresponding duty of the citizen to the society to provide for his own basic need to the extent he was able?"
He replied, "The citizen has no corresponding duty." I was appalled by this and remain so to this day.

I cannot understand how a person fully capable of providing for his own needs, in justice, can refuse to work and demand that his neighbor, who does work, should support him.

What follows is a partial transcript from an Aug. 9, 2013, Fox News Town Hall.

In it we meet a "social justice" recipient who sees no "injustice" in taking food stamps (a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP Card) paid for by Americans who work and pay taxes to support his opting not to work, while living as a beachbum. You can watch it yourself at youtube.com/watch?v=bP_izYhdehY.

Bret Baier: Food stamp enrollment has surged since 2008. Forty-seven million Americans are on the program now at a cost of $85 billion per year.

John Roberts: Meet Jason Greenslate, food stamp recipient.

Jason Greenslate: Another day in the life of Jason Greenslate, leading the rat life. ... I wake up, go down to the beach with my friends, hit on some chicks, and start drinking.

Roberts: ... (This) 29-year-old has chosen the life of a beach bum. ... He gets by with a little help from his friends, and you, the taxpayer.

Greenslate: (This is) My EBT SNAP Card ...

Roberts: How do you get a SNAP Card.

Greenslate: Just go out to the Human Resource Office, have your birth certificate and your Social Security Card. I don't have a pay check coming in, so I qualify ... They've got it now so that (you have to qualify) only once a year.

It wasn't always that easy. Back in 1996, if you were an able adult like Jason, with no family, there were limitations. You could get food stamps for only three months, every three years. The exception was, if you were working at least a 20-hour work week or participated in a work training program President Obama wiped away those restrictions when he signed his stimulus bill in 2009. And in 2010, Obama used his regulatory powers to extend the suspension of those "welfare to work requirements."

Roberts: So you fill out a form for a SNAP Card and they give you that for a year, no questions asked?

Greenslate: Yeah, you're good to go. Two hundred dollars per month. Two hundred dollars. It's free money. It's radical. Why not? ... It's my job to make sure everything's rolling smoothly -- the sun is up, the girls are out ...

Roberts then accompanied Greenslate to the Gourmet section of the local food mart.

Greenslate: We got achi, salmon, eel, yellowtail with rice and avocado, and they have lobster on special, and coconut water.
He paid with his SNAP Card.

Greenslate: Two hundred dollars a month ..." (Sliding card). ... All paid for by our wonderful tax dollars. ... Yeah. I usually get sushi, but I make it my own way. But they didn't have any good fish, so I just got the pre-made stuff.

Roberts then inquired why Greenslate didn't work.

Greenslate: That's not the direction I'm going right now.

Roberts: That's not something that appeals to you?

Greenslate: Not whatsoever.

It is a just thing to live on a pension that one has worked a lifetime to earn. It is an unjust thing to have the government tax -- steal from -- your neighbor who works so you can refuse to work and spend your life surfing. It is wrong to divert moneys that should go to the disabled to play Santa Claus and buy the votes of parasites unwilling to work.

Fifty years ago, I asked the right question.

Posted Online:  Sept. 14, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

If We Must Go to War, We Must Win It

"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." — Marshall Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of Allied Armies, WWI, on the Treaty of Versailles.

"Even in matters of self-preservation, no policy is pursued (by the Western democracies) even ten or fifteen years at a time." — Winston S. Churchill

It appears we are about to make war on Syria. Why? To reestablish President Obama's lost credibility? To punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons on his people?

There are only two valid reasons for going to war:

-- To guarantee that Assad's chemical weapons can never be used against us or our allies; and
-- To destroy Iran's principal ally, and to send a full warning to Iran that, if they don't immediately abandon the nuclear program so those weapons are never used against us or our allies, the same or worse will befall them.

If America should have learned any lesson in Asian wars since WWII, it is this: The enemy will fight until we get tired and go home -- if he is able.

These two goals require more than a proportional response; they require the will to win. Winning means you destroy the enemy to such an extent that he has no ability to continue the fight. It also requires doing whatever is necessary to ensure that victory doesn't become a five- or 20-year armistice. That will mean killing great numbers of civilians.

Aug. 21, 2012 President Obama, said, "We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling in the hands of the wrong people. We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a 'red line' for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemicals moving around or being utilized.

"We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the area that that's a 'red line' for us. And that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons or the use of chemical weapons."

Secretary of State John Kerry has told the world that that red line has been crossed, and the U. S. will make make "limited" war on Syria. But what is limited?

President Clinton in 1998 went after a "pharmaceutical plant" in Sudan, killing one, in response to attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 244, including 12 Americans. The reprisal told Osama bin Laden that America was not serious, and did nothing to deter him from the 9/11/01 attacks. Sending cruise missiles after an aspirin factory in Syria, may satisfy the president's need to prove his credibility, but it won't solve the Syrian chemical weapon problem, or the Iran nuclear problem.

If this is what President Obama has in mind, it will be meaningless and ineffective. President George W. Bush believed we could fight a limited war, topple Saddam Hussein and turn Iraq into a 21st century democracy. History proved him wrong. He believed we could crush the Taliban in Afghanistan and create a stable government. That hasn't happen either.

In the Middle East, the only way to win, is to obliterate the enemy in a short war of extermination. A short war because America doesn't have the stomach to fight limited war indefinitely. Mr. Obama's withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan prove Churchill was right.

But could a war of obliteration or extermination ever be justified without America first being subjected to a catastrophic attack which threatens its very existence?

I don't think so. Americans obliterate enemies only as a last resort — unless we become like our enemies.

Who are we going to hit with our cruise missiles? President Bashar Al-Assad and his inner-circle? The Syrian military? Hezbollah? Iran's Republican Guard "volunteers?" What if they survive the attack? What if they shoot back? What if Syria's Air Force attacks our naval units? What if Iran, in retaliation, closes the Strait of Hormuz? What if they attack Israel? What if Russia intervenes?

Before the President acts to punish Syria for crossing his "red line," these are grave questions that America must ask and answer. Our proportional response could turn into WWIII.

I am not willing to go to war to restore Mr. Obama's squandered credibility, or to keep Assad from killing his people. But if the American people (through their members of Congress) vote that war is necessary to guarantee destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, and/or to end Iran's nuclear ambitions, Congress should declare war.

But we must make war in a way that absolutely guarantees that Syrian chemicals and Iranian nukes can never be used against us or our allies. If you choose to use that quantum of force, you'd better be willing to kill as many Syrians or Iranians, military and civilian, as it takes to get the job done!

Only in that way can you make unmistakable to Iran and North Korea America is deadly serious.

Posted Online:  Sept. 03, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Why Be or Vote for a RINO?

                 "So, because you are lukewarm -- neither hot nor cold -- I am about to 
                  spit you out of my mouth. -- Revelations 3:16

Nelson A. Rockefeller, R-N.Y, sought the presidency in 1960, 1964 and 1968.

He was generally described as a "moderate" Republican. A less-than-kind commentator once described his presidential agenda as, "Me too, but not so much," indicating that Rockefeller wanted everything the Democrats wanted, but not so much.

I have never been able to understand why anybody would wish to be a RINO (Republican in Name Only), or why anybody would ever vote for one! Why vote for a Democrat "lite" when you can vote for the genuine free-spending thing? If you like what the Democrats are peddling, why not vote for a Democrat?

As I look at recent American presidential races, the landscape is littered with dead RINOs, run over by Democrats on their way to the White House. In 1976, moderate Republican Gerald Ford was done in by the Jimmy Carter Express.

In 1988 George H. W. ("Read my lips") Bush, in the guise of a conservative, beat Michael Dukakis. Then, in 1992, Bush (having broken his pledge not to raise taxes) lost to Bill Clinton when he appeared to be running as a moderate.

In 1996, President Clinton dispatched moderate Bob Dole. In 2008 President Obama buried moderate Republican John McCain. And in 2012, President Obama, running as Santa Claus, bumped off Mitt Romney, who couldn't make up his mind what he was.

Since the passage of Obamacare, Republicans in Congress have voted 40 times to repeal it -- knowing full well that their votes were utterly meaningless! With the Democrats in full control of the Senate, House Republicans knew that their bill had less than the chance of snowball in hell in the Senate, and even less than that, had it ever gotten to the president's desk.

Their votes in the House were political theater, and lousy political theater, at that.

Now the tea party branch of the Republican Party talks about refusing to vote money for Obamacare -- to "defund" it. If the Republicans truly hate Obamacare as much as they say they do, this is the foolproof way to kill it dead.

If they refuse to fund, we won't have to, in the words of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "read the bill to find out what is in it." It will be dead as a dinosaur!

But RINOs in the house are afraid to defund. They fear losing their precious seats (along with their power and perks) in Congress. So they are content to do nothing. Therefore, at this juncture it is not clear whether the Republicans have the guts to put their seats in Congress where their mouths are.

And then the Republican Party wonders why people think it is worthless -- why people won't vote for it.

If Obamacare is really as bad as the Republicans say, if it is really going to destroy jobs and the economy, why not do what is right? Why not find the guts? Put principle over politics.

Then again, if the RINOs have their feckless way, who needs them? And who needs the Republican Party? Who in their right mind is going to vote for a Democrat Lite when they can vote for a bona fide Democrat?

Republicans whine that President Obama and the Democrats are spending the country into bankruptcy. Their inane answer is to pass an Omnibus Spending Bill. But they fear to make the true cuts they whine are necessary for fear the president will veto the bill, and the Republicans will be blamed. So they engage in more banal political theater.

If the Republican in the House are serious, they have it in their hands to control the game, and to force the president to take the blame for any irresponsible veto. Instead of an Omnibus Spending Bill, pass separate spending bills for each programs the House Republicans deem worthwhile:

-- Social Security;
-- Medicare;
-- Military Procurement;
-- Veteran's benefits;
-- Food Stamps (SNAP program); etc.

At the same time, pass NO appropriation for Obamacare. Then watch and see if Mr. Obama really is willing to veto the individual appropriations for Social Security, Medicare, etc. If he does, he will not be able to avoid the blame.

Posted Online:  Aug. 21, 2013, 2:23 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Those Darn Democrat "Obstructionists!"

When the Affordable Care Act was crammed through Congress, without a single Republican vote, Republicans were labeled as "obstructionists."

In the full flush of victory, President Obama promised Americans (youtube.com/watch?v=wfl55GgHr5E) that:

-- "We will keep these promises to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period! If you like your heath-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period!" -- June 15, 2009

-- "First of all, if you've got health insurance and like your doctor, like your plan, you can keep your doctor, keep your plan." July 16, 2009

-- "No matter what you've heard, if you like your doctor or your health-care plan you can keep it." -- Aug. 15, 2009

-- "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period!" -- Aug. 22, 2009

-- "If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job ... nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." Sept. 9, 2009

-- "Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan." Jan. 27, 2010

But lately, even the president's most loyal supporters are beginning to sound like Republican "obstructionists."

On April 18, 2013, Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the principal authors of Obamacare, told the Senate, "I just see a huge train wreck coming down."

A few days before, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D.-W.V, also instrumental in drafting the law, said "it is just beyond comprehension... (it is) the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress."

And now, leaders of three great Democrat-leaning labor unions are joining the Cassandras. James P. Hoffa, Teamsters president, Joseph Hansen, United Food and Commercial Workers president and D. Taylor, UNITE-HERE president, have written:

"Dear Leader (Harry) Reid and Leader (Nancy) Pelosi:

"When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class...

"We have been strong supporters of ... affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision.

"Since the ACA was enacted, we have been ... seeking reasonable regulatory interpretations to the statute that would help prevent the destruction of non-profit health plans ... Our arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. ...

"We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios: First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees' work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers' hours to avoid this obligation ... The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.

 Second, our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the administration, our employees will be treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded to other citizens...

"And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won't receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they'll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable ...

"The Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans...

"Corrections can be made within the existing statute that will allow our members to continue to keep their current health plans and benefits just as the President pledged."

And now a fourth union, the National Treasury Employes Union, which represents the IRS employees who will enforce Obamacare, also wants out!

And, by the way, President Obama and his Office of Personnel Management now have decreed that those impoverished folks in Congress, and their staffers (who earn $75K to $175K per year) will have you and me pick up 75 percent of their Obamacare insurance costs.

Michael Cannon, a health-care expert at the libertarian Cato Institute explained why this is happening: "The whole problem with 'Obamacare' is this: the only people who can implement it properly are people who are competent enough to plan one-sixth of the economy, and no such people exist."

George Orwell was right, "Some animals are more equal than others!"

Posted Online:  Aug. 14, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

These are America's Locust Years

                            "Washington's taken its eye off the ball."
                                                 — President Obama, July 24, 2013 Galesburg

As I look at America's last five years, I see a rudderless country, drifting ever faster into the maelstrom. I see no serious effort on the part of President Obama or Congress to deal with the great issues facing America.

Instead, we are led by a president and two parties intent only on gaining/retaining power and distributing the spoils to loyal supporters. And as long as supporters get their "bread and circuses," everybody goes on living in a fool's paradise.

By "bread and circuses," I mean pensions, Social Security and our other forms of corporate and individual welfare. With apologies to Winston Churchill, I call these our "Locust Years."

Consider just some of the problems America is facing:

-- Social Security is going broke.

-- Medicare Part A is going broke.

-- Immigrants pour across our southern border.

-- Billions of dollars are spent buying foreign oil -- often from our enemies.

-- The Muslim world -- Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, etc. -- is in chaos.

-- North Korea is developing longer range missiles, and threatens us and its neighbors with nuclear attack. Iran is trying to build a bomb.

-- A real unemployment rate (U-6) of 13.8 percent.

-- An overall unemployment rate among "young people" (ages 18-24) of 18 percent; among young blacks of 28.2 percent; among young Latinos at 16.6 percent.

-- Our cities and states are going bankrupt, and as they do, bondholders and public employees and pensioners face economic ruin.

What serious efforts are being undertaken to deal with these problems?
I see none; only bread and circuses.

The bankruptcy filing by the City of Detroit, is the first shoe to drop. Chicago's bond rating has just been reduced to Aa3 with a "negative outlook." A hundred other cities are close to bankruptcy.

24/7 Wall St labels California the nation's "worst run state." It's per capita debt is $4,008. It has a 20.7 percent budget deficit. Its unemployment rate is 11.7 percent, while 16.6 percent of its people live below the poverty line. Its S&P credit rating is the worst of all the states. Moody's says it is second worst.

Recently California voters passed a ballot initiative which raises sales and income taxes on people who make $250K or more. The Tax Foundation says that the state's increased taxes make it the country's third worst state to do business in.

In some respects, Illinois is in even worse shape -- though it lacks the honor of being labeled "worst." Illinois per capita debt of $4,790 is worse than California's.

It's budget deficit also is worse: 40.2 percent. Its unemployment rates is 9.8 percent and 15 percent of its people live below the poverty line. Standard and Poors gave Illinois the second worst credit rating.

And Illinois state pensions systems are $85 billion "underfunded." In January 2013, S&P downgraded Illinois' credit rating to "A- with a negative outlook." Moody's lowered it from A3 to A2 with a "negative outlook." And now Fitch has downgraded the state to "A- with a negative outlook."

Detroit's bondholders, employees and pensioners are demanding a federal bailout." Bailing out one city is possible. But what happens when Washington is called upon to bail out 99 more cities, and the states of California, Rhode Island, Illinois, Arizona and New Jersey (with it $6,944 per capita debt), not to mention Social Security and Medicare?

What if the Obamacare cost estimates, as is probable, were grossly understated? What if we can't really provide insurance for 39 million people (including 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants) without the government providing additional billions of dollars? What if there is no free lunch?

In 1948, Mr. Churchill penned "The Gathering Storm," the first volume of his history of World War II, and the events leading up to that tragedy. In the fifth chapter, "The Locust Years," Churchill described the five-year period from 1931-1935, the years when Hitler came to power, when the European Democracies still put their trust in the "collective security" promised by the League of Nations, when the United States and Europe were mired in the Great Depression and isolation, and when the British government looked with unseeing eyes on ominous events in Germany.

Mr. Churchill decried the lack of leadership of Britain's national government, in these words:

"Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success regardless of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigor in ... leaders of the ... government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems ... the utter devotion ... to sentiment apart from reality ... and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries ... beyond comparison in human experience."

Change only the word "Europe" to "the world," and Mr. Churchill could well have been speaking of America's last five years.

Unless America addresses its problems without delay, America will soon pay an awful forfeit for its lack of leadership, for its Locust Years, and for its policy of bread and circuses.

President Obama has lamented "Washington's taken its eye off the ball." But he and John Boehner are Washington -- Washington at its most feckless.

Posted Online:  Aug. 10, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Federal Government Now Has Unlimited Power

On June 28, 2012, in National Federation of Business v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote, "The Framers created a Federal Government of limited powers, and assigned to this Court the duty of enforcing those limits."

Then, in the remainder of that opinion upholding the Obamacare law and its"penalty" as a "tax," Justice Roberts administered the coup de grace to all pretense that the federal government was in truth one of limited powers:

"The Government does not claim that the taxing power allows Congress to issue such a command. Instead, the Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance, but rather as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product.

"There may, however, be a more fundamental objection to a tax on those who lack health insurance. Even if only a tax, the payment under §5000A(b) remains a burden that the Federal Government imposes for an omission, not an act. If it is troubling to interpret the Commerce Clause as authorizing Congress to regulate those who abstain from commerce, perhaps it should be similarly troubling to permit Congress to impose a tax for not doing something.

The chief justice then upheld the Obamacare "tax" and took to its logical conclusion what Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had written in his 1791 Report on Manufactures to the House of Representatives:

"The National Legislature has express authority 'to lay and collect taxes ... to ... provide for the ... general welfare,' with no other qualifications than (1) that 'all ...excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States; and (2) that no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to numbers, ascertained by a census' ... and (3) that 'no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.'

"It is, therefore, of necessity, left to the discretion of (Congress) to pronounce upon the objects which concern the general welfare ... The only qualification of the generality of the phrase in question, which seems to be admissible, is this: That the object, to which an appropriation of money is to be made, be general, and not local; its operation extending, in fact, or by possibility, throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot."

Under Hamilton's formulation, Congress is the sole judge of what concerns the general welfare. Where Roberts goes beyond Hamilton is that Roberts would say Congress has power to tax not only acts, but omissions. Under the Roberts' formulation, Congress -- once it determines that its tax concerns the general welfare -- can tax anything! It can tax buying insurance or not buying insurance. It can tax eating broccoli, or not eating broccoli. It can tax having children or not having children. It can tax engaging in a sexual act or not doing so.

In 1828, during the course of the nullification crisis, John C. Calhoun in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest, foresaw the threat to the the sovereignty of the states by vesting in any branch or department of the federal government the power to "act as judge" in controversies between the federal and the state governments, and between the federal government and the people -- that is, to "act as judge" in a case where it also was either "plaintiff" or "defendant."

"If it be conceded, as it must be by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that (the states) hold their portion by the same tenure as (the General), it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction. 'The right of judging,'  in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself, and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the 'exclusive right of judging' of the portion allotted to each, is, in reality, not to divide it at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the General Government (it matters not by what department to be exercised) is to convert it, in fact,into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to divest the States, in reality, of all their rights. It is impossible to understand the force of terms, and to deny so plain a conclusion."

To say that Congress alone is the sole judge of the general welfare and that once Congress decides that an activity -- or inactivity -- concerns the general welfare and should be taxed, is to give Congress unlimited power.

When that power is coupled with the power of the federal government to define what is and what isn't religious activity, and what is or what isn't free speech all notions that the federal government is a government of "limited powers" becomes a cynical fiction.

The "power to tax," in the words of Chief Justice John Marshal, is the "power to destroy." If you doubt that assertion, simply consider what the Internal Revenue Service has been doing to
conservative groups. Tea party-type groups exist to speak in favor of limited government. The government, by labeling their free speech as "political activity" seeks to abolish their 1st Amendment rights.

By denying that the Catholic Church, in operating universities and charities, is engaged in religious activity, the government seeks to deny the church "the free exercise of religion," Roberts' holding is a logical extension of Hamilton's position. But in the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "the law is not logic; it is experience."

The American experience is that we declared independence when a king tried to tax sugar and stamps. Would the people who ratified our Constitution have done so had they understood that it would mean what Mr. Justice Roberts now says it means? No way!

Posted Online:  Aug. 03, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea