More Thoughts on Limited Government

This story about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act court cases highlights some of the issues we face as a country.  If our Constitution is designed to provide strictly limited and curtailed federal government power, and the limits on that federal power have been gradually eroded since the innauguration of the New Deal, then the full implementation of the PPACA may indeed be the final nail in the coffin of the principle of the constitutionally enumerated powers, and the individual states will truly, finally become mere local organs of the administrative super-state:

The challenge to Obamacare may be the last-ditch effort to save the 50 united states from finally disappearing into an all-powerful national state.

The closing paragraphs of the article highlight the problem:

So when the question of the constitutionality of the individual mandate finally reaches the Supreme Court, the justices will have two options. They can find a way to fit Obamacare’s mandate into a century of precedent allowing for yet more federal power while insisting there are limits. Or they can conclude, as the 11th Circuit does, that upholding the individual mandate will make it clear to all that there are no limits. 

If the justices are paying attention, they will recognize that they are part of an escalating national debate over the role of government and the liberties of those whose consent has always been said to be necessary to the exercise of any government power. The Supreme Court will not settle that debate. It will continue long after the fate of Obamacare is recorded in the Supreme Court Reports. 

But the members of the Court can contribute to the renewal of American federalism by recognizing that at bottom, the federal structure exists to protect liberty, not to protect either federal or state power. In making the case for protecting liberty through divided power, the Court can look to its own recent decision in Bond v. United States, and to the opinion of 6th Circuit Judge Sutton who, despite his upholding of Obamacare, recognized that “a critical guarantee of individual liberty is [the] vertical separation of powers between the National Government and the States.”