We Are at a Turning Point

by
Andrew P. Napolitano

Recently
by Andrew P. Napolitano: A
Vast New Federal Power

Presently in
America, nearly half of all households receive either a salary or
substantial benefits from the government. Presently in America,
nearly half of all adults pay no federal income taxes. Presently
in America, the half that pay no income taxes receive the bulk of
their income courtesy of the government, but ultimately from the
half that do. This money is extracted involuntarily from the paying
half by a permanent bureaucracy that extracts and gives away more
each year no matter who is running the government. The recipients
of these transfer payments rely upon them for subsistence, so they
have a vested financial interest in sending to Washington those
who will continue to take your money and give it to them.

It is no wonder
that we are now saddled with the micromanagement of health care
by the same bureaucratic mindset that mismanages the Post Office
and everything else the federal government runs. It should not be
surprising to know that presently in America, half of the people
actually want the government to take care of their needs. The same
was the case under Communist regimes, but here those folks vote.

Hence, we have
laws that force us to be charitable to those whom the government
designates as worthy of our charity, that limit the amount of salt
that restaurants can put into our food, that permit the government
to watch us on street corners and subways and in the lobbies of
buildings, that let the president fight wars of opportunity, that
permit the Federal Reserve to print money with no value and inflate
prices and destroy savings, that allow the government to listen
to us on our cellphones and use those phones to follow us wherever
we go, and, according to CIA Director David Petraeus, that let the
government anticipate our movements inside our homes.

And as of the
last week in June, the government has a vast new power that was
brought to us by the Supreme Court’s latest attack on personal freedom.
Congress can now lawfully command any behavior of individuals that
it pleases – whether or not the subject of the behavior is a power
granted to Congress by the Constitution – and it may punish noncompliance
with that command, so long as the punishment is called a
tax.

Justice Antonin
Scalia’s whimsical query during the Supreme Court oral argument
on the health care law about whether Congress could make him eat
broccoli suddenly isn’t as funny as it was when he asked it, because
the answer is: It can fine him for not eating broccoli, so long
as it calls that fine a tax.

Quick: If you
call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Answer: Four,
because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make a tail a leg.

How did we
get here?

We got here
because voters and the government we elected, and even the courts
the popular branches appointed and confirmed, have lost sight of
first principles. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration
of Independence that our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness are a part of our humanity, and when we fought and
won the Revolution under that premise, and when the first Congress
enacted that language as the first federal law, this became the
irrevocable recognition of the Natural Law as the basis for our
personal freedom and limited government. Since our rights come from
our humanity, they don’t come from the government.

But you would
never know that from looking at the government. In New York City,
where I work at Fox News Channel, we are all embroiled in two disputes
this summer over the constitutional role of the government in our
lives. The mayor, a self-made billionaire who likes donuts and has
bodyguards but wants to tell others how to live in private and in
public, is trying to ban soda pop in containers larger than 16 ounces
and wants the police to be able to stop and frisk anyone on a whim
– and all in the name of health and safety. He is actually banning
freedom.

Imagine Jefferson
being told what to eat or stopped and frisked on a whim. And then
imagine the Supreme Court telling him that he must pay a tax if
he fails to comport his personal private behavior as Congress –
which doesn’t believe in privacy or personal freedom – commands.

Here is how
you can tell that these are bad days for freedom: Does the government
need your permission to violate your rights, or do you need the
government’s permission to exercise them? The answer is painfully
obvious.

Presently in
America, what are we going to do about it?

Reprinted
with the author’s permission.

July 12, 2012

Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is It
Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case
for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano
and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit creators.com.

Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano

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