Granting the federal government additional power is dangerous.

The recent passage of health insurance legislation through congress has deeply divided the country's citizens.  Its proponents champion the need to extend health insurance coverage to the stratum of society that, for various reasons, tends not to have full time health benefits.  I've seen various numbers but between 13% and 17% of the United States population falls into this category.  Opponents declare the cost in terms of liberty and federal spending is far too high for what this law claims to accomplish.

I believe it is necessary to provide avenues of health care to all residents of this country.  In the same way we provide avenues for anyone to seek and obtain gainful employment, it should be possible to do the same for health care without trampling on individual liberties.

The dangerous precedent set by this law is enabling the federal government to prescribe certain acts of commerce to be mandatory by statute.  If you have a heartbeat you are breaking the law if you don't purchase a health insurance policy.  Then they use the Treasury Department to punish you for your crime (also in violation of constitutional statutes on taxation, but that's another story).

The proponents are willing to overlook the implication of this seemingly minute detail compared with the perceived benefits the downtrodden will receive in exchange.  This was very carefully packaged by the congressional leadership to obscure this fact from those who don't value basic liberty as highly as social engineering.

But let's examine another piece of recent legislation that left its initial supporters with some grain of remorse:  The Patriot Act.  Named to make you look unpatriotic if you opposed it, the act essentially gave the federal government unprecedented powers to invade individual privacy.  I supported it at the time because, as the health care law advocates do today, I believed the benefits outweighed the risks.  Indeed, under the administration which passed the law, it was generally used for its prescribed intent and the terrorists suffered more than the citizenry.

Then one day, through a perfect storm of emotion overcoming the sensibility of independent voters, a Chicago machine politician with no executive experience and highly questionable past associations was catapulted into the White House.  His administration quickly made use of the Patriot Act to spy on American citizens with whom they had political differences:  firearms owners and pro-life advocates.  Remorse isn't strong enough a term to describe how I felt at such abuse of power.

The moral of the story is that when you expand federal powers to support legislation which you deem necessary today, there is the potential those very same powers will fall into unfriendly hands when, not if, the political climate shifts.

Lobbyists would induce congress to force Americans to buy their otherwise uncompetitive products.  Some time in the future, we may be required to purchase something very unpleasant indeed.  They could force you to buy firearms, GPS trackers, or even unsavory "art" to sustain some well-connected person's non-viable business.  When that is challenged in court, they would draw on the 2010 health care act as precedent to dismiss the action.

Let's hope the courts put an end to this egregious transgression before the United States of America falls to the level of the rest of the world in how much it values freedom and liberty.