[J.P.'s Moment of Common Sense on Broad View, KBZZ 1270 AM and 96.1 FM in Reno. Listen to Broad View live Saturdays at 2:00 PM Pacific Time.]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the federal government is our master.  Ruling in favor of Obamacare’s mandate that every American must buy health insurance, the Supreme Court formalized the notion that government can do anything it wants.

There is no conceivable limit now.  I defy anyone to imagine a law—no matter how arbitrary, authoritarian, or tyrannical—which cannot be justified after this ruling.

Wednesday you went to work naively thinking that you worked to satisfy your own wants and needs, your family’s wants and needs, and whatever you thought was demanded of you by God.  On Friday you went to work for the government, to satisfy whatever the federal bureaucracy, in its inhumane wisdom, decides you need—only two days apart on the calendar, but light-years different in the way you’re perceived by the universe.  Wednesday you were an independent human being.  Friday you were a slave.

I wonder how many of you felt the difference.

This ruling doesn’t just command you to buy health insurance, you have to buy the insurance the government designs which means coverage of all sorts of squalid and possibly unnecessary procedures you might find immoral or unlikely but the government will require.  Do you want insurance that covers birth control, abortions, sex change operations, and pregnancy?  You don’t?  Tough luck, chump, you’re a slave now.  Get used to doing what you’re told.

We should all be in mourning and I don’t mean just Americans.  I mean all of humanity.  The United States was the shining city on the hill but the American experiment is finished now.  Dead.  Sorry, folks, but the notion that individual liberty granted by God is inalienable died when Chief Justice John Roberts became a traitor to the principles he pretended to represent.  Roberts decided to join with the extreme liberals on the court.  It’s a strange move.  Even Justice Anthony Kennedy, known to lean toward a liberal viewpoint and the man everybody expected to be the swing vote, couldn’t stomach this much power being in the hands of government.  But Chief Justice Roberts, ostensibly a conservative, could and did.

It’s downright weird.

And that’s not the only strange aspect of this ruling.  Roberts wrote the formal opinion and said the mandate is legal because it’s a tax, even though nobody, not the 26 states challenging the mandate nor the Obama administration defending the mandate, made that particular argument.

President Obama himself made it clear, over and over again, that the penalty imposed on Americans for not buying insurance, was not a tax.  He was adamant.  He was confident.  He pontificated about it at length.  He pretends to be a constitutional expert, remember?  But according to this ruling the president was dead wrong.  The Supreme Court, maybe feeling a twinge of conscience and uncomfortable with the depth and breadth of the slavery to which they were condemning us, waffled on the reason why we must be slaves.  They said the Obamacare mandate is a tax, not a mandate.

Sophistry is defined as “a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.”  That pretty much describes Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.  The mandate is not a mandate... and suddenly your inalienable rights are alienable.

What happened to us?  When did American blood get so thin that we let a small group of Harvard and Yale elitists tell us what to do?  There was a time in this country when men signed their names to a declaration of independence knowing that those signatures exposed them to death by execution for treason against the King of England.  They signed anyway because they believed in liberty.  They would rather die than abandon their desire for freedom.  Now we have the mayor of New York telling us we can’t have a large soda and we’re eating too much popcorn.  They told us we couldn’t smoke in certain spots, then they told us we couldn’t smoke in most spots, now they’re trying to tell us we can’t smoke in our own homes.  They’re passing laws to prohibit cellphone conversations in cars.  The TSA gropes us and humiliates us every time we board an airplane.  I need a passport to go to Canada now!  What the hell is wrong with us?

Maybe it’s time to stand up and at least pretend to care about freedom.  Maybe it’s time for a little civil disobedience, America.  After all, they can’t put all of us in prison.  Merchants of New York, grow some hair on your chest and keep selling whatever size soda and whatever size popcorn you want.  To hell with Mayor Bloomberg—he’s an idiot.  Everybody else, it’s time to walk into the nearest restaurant and light up a cigarette.  Even if you don’t smoke.  Hell, light up a cigar and really give the self-righteous government prigs a reason to wail.  Then have a cellphone conversation in your car on the way home, okay?

And oh, yeah, last but not least, ignore the Obamacare mandate.  You’re an American.  You’re descended from people willing to sign their own death warrants—nobody tells you what to do.  Nobody.

That’s... today’s dose of common sense.

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.”—Henry David Thoreau

“We must be the change we wish to see.”—Gandhi

From Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA        Tweet

July 2, 2012 - Hey J.P., did you see your quote on Doug Ross? - GhostntheMachine, IHTM

J.P. replies: Wow, cool beans.  Here's a screen capture:

July 1, 2012 - Fantastic piece J.P. I cannot believe so many are just lying down WAKE UP AMERICA im thinking of getting a few friends together which do you think will annoy the nanny staters more smoking or drinking in public? - Devin, North Dakota

J.P. replies: Definitely smoking.  Modern busybodies really have a bug up their butts about smoking, to the point of complete irrationality.

June 30, 2012 - All I can say is AMEN! – G.D., North Carolina

June 30, 2012 - Gary & I really enjoyed... thank you for this article. We are sick over what Roberts did... what a traitor & coward! They had only one decision to make... is the mandate constitutional or not... and he was too chicken to decide... everyone should read Glenn Becks new book, "Cowards", as he has it right! – Mary D., Michigan

June 30, 2012 - I was looking forward to your comments on this subject. What's happening to our country is frightening, onerous, sad and destructive. On a happier note: Welcome to Grand Rapids! – Boomer Pie, Michigan