Wide swaths of private liberty should never, ever fall to political oversight. Once politics engages, liberty, pretty much a black and white concept, becomes grayed through the political process.
“Gray or grey is a color seen commonly in nature. It is created by mixing white and black in different proportions. Depending on the amount of light, the human eye can interpret the same object as either gray or some other color.”[1]
Politics drives me crazy, in some measure because I can't rid myself of passion toward it. Otherwise, because it is an endless sea of gray coloration, and I want to be a black or white kind of guy. For those who see political theory through rose colored glasses, the truth is your vision is distorted.
Here is a great example. I see Medicare, just as ObamaCare, as unconstitutional. You might think I am irrational for thinking so: but the United States Constitution does not enumerate the power for the federal government to create a national health insurance program. If you find it, please tell me where and why you believe it to be true.
On the other hand, Medicare is engrained in our national psyche. Trying to save it by modifying it may send Republicans to the back bench. What are we who see black and white to do about this? Would we be better off with a rigid, perfectly white view of Medicare’s nature, and then tilt at windmills trying to undo it? Or, do we try, connive, coalesce, and work incrementally to remove some of its most perverse aspects? In other words, do we shade our black and white view to become more gray in the hope of eventually restoring some semblance of constitutional balance?
ObamaCare is patently unconstitutional, despite what the Supreme Court might eventually rule. But what if the Court only chisels away the individual mandate, and leaves the balance intact? Obama’s devotees, who also see things as black and white (I might have said red and white), argue that the mandate is required for the whole bill to work. Obama’s detractors argue that the mandate is required for the whole bill to work. This is about the only aspect of ObamaCare upon which they agree. This odd agreement could mean nothing to the Court.
The Court very likely could rule the mandate to be unconstitutional, and let the balance of the bill stand. Such a ruling would protect the federal government from endless state-led lawsuits on any new federal law a state despises, and upset federal sovereignty. My bet is the Court will finesse this gray decision, and leave the country in confusion.
We who prefer black and white politics to gray politics are likely to be engaged for the next 20 years trying to adjust the shade of gray to more closely match our own perspective. We may be forced to attempt to reform health insurance exchanges, or accountable care organizations, or defang the competitive effectiveness crowd, while at the same time making it appear we are not trying to rid ourselves of them. This is highly frustrating to a black and white guy which finally gets me to the whole point of this article.
As politics has touched health care, we have been subjected to an endless cycle of grayed policies that do nothing but pit freedom-loving people against powerful political factions and yes, the hated interest groups. If ObamaCare stands, we will have lost what little liberty remains.
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