By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, September 27, 2013
"It's the law of the land."
This is rapidly becoming the preferred shorthand argument
for why criticism of Obamacare is just so, so wrong. It also serves as the lead
sentence of a larger claim that all attempts to overturn the Affordable Care
Act are really symptoms of a kind of extremist right-wing lunacy.
For instance, here's Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,
who walked out of the painting "American Gothic" to deliver this
homespun wisdom: "We're not going to bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny
the mere fact that Obamacare is the law. We will not bow to Tea Party
anarchists who refuse to accept that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is
constitutional."
Where to begin? For starters, I know a great many
self-described members of the Tea Party, and I've yet to meet one who would not
acknowledge -- admittedly with dismay -- that Obamacare is the law. Nor have I
met one unwilling to concede that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is
constitutional. Though from my informal polling, I can report that most think
the court's reasoning left much to be desired (logic, persuasiveness,
consistency, etc.).
Lurking beneath such lazy rhetoric is a nasty
psychological insinuation that there's something deranged not just about
opposing Obamacare, but about being a conservative. This is an ancient smear,
used to discredit conservatives in order to avoid debating them.
Reid is a dim and sallow man whose tin ear long ago
started to rust. But it's worth pointing out that "anarchy" is not
defined in any textbook or dictionary I can find as "the absence of
Obamacare." While, yes, it's true, most "Mad Max," zombie and other
post-apocalyptic films are set in worlds without Obamacare, that's really not
the most salient factor.
More to the point, petitioning Congress to repeal a bad
law through formal procedures is not the kind of behavior educated people
normally associate with anarchism.
Indeed, the hypocrisy of liberals who find it somehow
"extreme" for citizens to organize peacefully to overturn a law they
consider bad and unjust is a marvel to behold. The Fugitive Slave Act was once
the law of the land. So was the Defense of Marriage Act. Were those determined
to overturn them anarchists?
On an almost daily basis, I get a fundraising e-mail from
a Democrat or from liberal outfits begging for help to overturn Citizens
United, which in case you hadn't heard is the law of the land. Why won't these
anarchists and extremists accept that the Supreme Court has ruled? I cannot
wait for the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade, just to hear liberals
announce, "Well, the fight is over. The Court has spoken."
Nearly the whole story of American liberalism is a story
of dedicated ideologues seeking to overturn what they consider to be bad laws
and replace them with good ones. Sometimes those efforts were laudable, as when
they fought to overturn the doctrine of "separate but equal" (despite
fierce opposition from Democrats). And sometimes they were lamentable, as when
they routinely labor to overturn or deny school choice laws, consigning
underprivileged children to horrible schools just to placate teachers unions.
But when conservatives try to do the exact same thing, they can't simply be
wrong, according to liberals. They must be demented extremists, anarchists and
-- another favorite epithet these days -- nihilists.
The hypocrisy goes deeper though. Yes, Obamacare is the
law of the land. But it is President Obama -- who is legally and
constitutionally required to faithfully execute the law -- and not Republicans
who has openly defied it. He has unilaterally and often with no statutory
authority opted to waive and delay the parts of the Affordable Care Act that
are politically inconvenient to him (or that his administration has been too
incompetent to implement).
Obama has declared that in states setting up their own
exchanges, no one will have to prove their income in order to sign up for
subsidies. He is so desperate to get the subsidies rolling -- and hence, he
hopes, buy support for the unpopular law -- he's willing to let people skip the
part in the law where it says they have to prove they qualify for the goodies.
He delayed the requirement for large businesses to comply with the law, because
the initial turmoil of having millions kicked off their insurance plans was
more than he could bear politically.
While this is closer to anarchy than anything the tea
partiers have pushed for, anarchy still isn't the right word for it. Because
President Obama still believes people should obey the law of the land -- when
it pleases him, that is.
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