Opinion: Morality is always higher than law. Any sincere system of law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, is the human attempt to express morality in language. Law is itself higher than whim.
When law expresses “malus in se” it expresses that an offense against that law is “evil in itself” as determined by human experience. “Malus in se” laws include those against murder, robbery, bearing false witness, adultery, child abuse, and so forth. “Malus in se” is distinguished from “malus prohibitus.”
“Malus prohibitus” laws are those that a government body produces to prevent people from doing something, such as building a porch on a dwelling without paying for a permit from a bureaucrat. In other words, such actions are considered “bad” only because a government body said so.
In our day, judges, those responsible for upholding the law, and presumably its background morality, have substituted their whims for law. How else can we interpret a court decision that ignores the clearest wording of a law, and substitutes what the court wanted it to mean?
The Rule of Law was murdered on June 25, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not mean what it actually says, but what they have decided Congress meant it (or now means it) to mean, even though the words could not be any clearer. Even though we have a number of videos of Jonathan Gruber explaining why the law says what it so blindingly obviously does say.
The reason the law was deliberately worded in this blindingly obvious way is that the architects of the law were and are determined to force supposedly free Americans, living in a supposedly free Republic, to give up control of their medical care, and thus their lives, to socialist bureaucrats.
The architects of the law wanted to force the governors of each of the fifty states into a Hobson’s choice: incur the expense of setting up an Exchange designed to force citizens into government-dictated Plans and trigger the penalties of the employer mandate, or “deprive” their citizens of taxpayer subsidies to insurers to make the unaffordable premiums look affordable to those with incomes in the qualifying range. Thirty-four governors called their bluff.
In his dissent, Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Alito and Thomas, lays out a devastating critique of the opinion of the majority, stating that the answer to the question of whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established not by “the State” but by the Secretary (of Health and Human Services) gets tax credits (subsidies) would be so “obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”
In murdering the Rule of Law, the court murders language. Since language is the means by which we express thought, the court is murdering thought as well. Whether a “penalty” is termed a “tax;” or “established by the state” is adjudged to be the same as “established by the federal government;” or brutal incarceration is termed “re-education,” all have the same effect. History has shown in very recent memory that when language is murdered, when the Rule of Law is murdered, human beings should realize they are deeply endangered.
Obama says it’s a triumph, because medical care is not a “privilege for the few.” Has he come off the golf course into the emergency room to see that medical care in this nation is not, and never was, reserved as a privilege for the few? Or isn’t he just a dishonest man who knows how to murder language in an Orwellian way?
What really is a “privilege for the few” will be the medical care he and his family, and the Clintons, and other politicians can expect to receive. Meanwhile, others will die because a bureaucrat’s decision, with no appeal, will withhold medical care from them.
Some will say we should give up. But the forces of tyranny never are satisfied. They want to destroy freedom. We will either prevail in our drive for freedom, die while trying, or perhaps be murdered by the enemies of freedom. But we will not give up.
About the author: Dr Tamzin Rosenwasser earned her MD from Washington University in St. Louis after putting herself through medical school. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and also Dermatology, and has practiced Emergency Medicine as well. Dr. Rosenwasser served as President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in 2007 and 2008. Dr Rosenwasser has written numerous articles and opinion editorials, and has been a guest on many media broadcast shows. She is currently writing a book on medical practice. She also serves as the chair of the Research Advisory Committee of the Newfoundland Club of America. As a life-long dog lover and trainer, she realizes that her dogs have better access to medical care and more medical privacy than she has, and her veterinarians are paid more than physicians in the United States for exactly the same types of surgery.