Nancy Pelosi showed recently why she was never worthy to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, and indeed that her San Francisco constituents show incredibly bad judgment in re-electing her term after term. She actually said that the Founding Fathers would applaud the health care reform bill, or “Obamacare,” did they live to see it. In fact, Obamacare violates every precept for which they stood.

Pelosi invokes Founding Fathers

Nancy Pelosi invoked the Founding Fathers in the well of the House of Representatives. Speaking directly after her equally partisan colleague, John Conyers of Michigan, the former Speaker said:

I appreciate [my colleague’s] leadership on helping us honor what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee – a healthier life, the liberty to pursue happiness free of the constraints that lack of healthcare might provide to the family.

But she was not finished dishonoring the memories of the Founding Fathers:

If you want to be a photographer, a writer, an artist, a musician, you can do so. If you want to start a business, if you want to change jobs, under the Affordable Care Act, you have that liberty to pursue your happiness free of the constraint.

In so saying, she said that the Founding Fathers preferred to entitle people to something like art patronage, or to a government partnership in business. Nothing could be further from the vision of the Founding Fathers of a society of free men, not entitled men.

Obamacare: I could say it,….

The US Constitution. Photo: National Archives of the United States

The late Ayn Rand created heroes who famously said,

I could say to you that [your policies fail even at their own aims]. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise.

This is a good “I-could-say-that-but-I-won’t” moment, because Obamacare indeed fails on its own terms.

• It does not guarantee a healthier life. At best it offers more of the same regimens, the effectiveness of which more and more people now question. At worst it rations such care. Result: someone is going to die, by order of the government.
• Liberty? To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi herself: Are you serious? Are you honest-to-God serious? What liberty does anyone enjoy if the government forces him to buy something?
• Pursuit of happiness? By that phrase, Thomas Jefferson meant property. But Obamacare is not about property. Indeed it has a real-estate transaction tax, a direct attack on property and the right to own it.

On all these grounds, Obamacare is an abject failure.

…but I won’t

But that is not the real reason the Founding Fathers would object. They would object because Obamacare violates the Constitution, and every precept that they put into it. This non-exhaustive lists gives only the worst offenses:

1. It forces people to buy something, for the simple pleasure of breathing.
2. It raises a standing army (the Ready Reserve Corps) and appropriates money for twice the term that the Founding Fathers allowed.
3. It lays capitation taxes.
4. It taxes the exports of some States worse than others.
5. It subjects your private medical records to unreasonable and warrant-less search and seizure.
6. It deprives you of property without due process of law, and enslaves you by forcing you to buy something.
7. It favors some religions, and disfavors others.

In this light, how dare an elected Representative of the people suggest that the Founding Fathers would applaud such a travesty of Constitutional law? By so saying, she commits more than slander. She violates her oath to

support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, [and to] bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

Indeed she very clearly took that oath

with mental reservation [and] purpose of evasion.

So much for her loyalty to the Founding Fathers.

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