Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.Individual sovereignty is under attack.
-- Mark Levin, Ameritopia
Not the wacko, every-man-is-a-sovereign-the-United-States-is-a-corporation kind of sovereignty, but the notion that, as individuals, we have worth and dignity that deserve protection.
This attack exists in every corner of our society and has found its way into our language. Liberal politicians talk about the "cost" of a tax cut and ask conservatives, "How are you going to pay for that tax cut?" They thus view tax cuts as expenditures, but expenditures of what? Of the money to which they deem the government entitled.
A tax cut "spends" nothing. It is an acknowledgment that the money being taxed belongs in the first instance to the earner, not the government. Most Americans would willingly pay taxes to support legitimate government functions, but we resist ferociously the notion that our incomes belong to the government.
Of course, videos produced by the Democratic Party proudly proclaim that "government is the only thing to which we all belong."
The massive growth and rapid accumulation of power by the federal government threatens state sovereignty as well. In Arizona vs. United States, the Supreme Court earlier this year affirmed an injunction preventing enforcement of Arizona's immigration law. In doing so, Justice Scalia observed in dissent, the Court's ruling "deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have
no right to be there."
In a most painful intrusion into individual sovereignty, the Supreme Court blessed a mandate-as-tax designed to force Americans to engage in commerce, something never before attempted in the history of our great nation. Despite the dissent's pointed observation that "Article I contains no whatever-it-takes-to-solve-a-national-problem power," we are in an era when every problem is deemed sufficiently serious to warrant federal intervention, appropriation, and perhaps even a new agency or board or czar, appointed by the president with plenary power to make things worse.
The attack on individual sovereignty is not just legislative, it is found in social and cultural attacks on the rich and the successful. Mitt Romney is derided for paying taxes at a 14 percent rate, but little is made of his extraordinary charitable donations, particularly when matched up against the president's.
Here in the Enchanted Mitten, the prevailing legal struggle is between rule-of-law judges, who apply the law as it is written by the people's elected representatives, and the empathy judges, who rule based on their own opinions and feelings, unfettered by notions of judicial restraint or faithful adherence to the will of the people as expressed by their representatives. Rule-of-law judges respect people and what their legislators say; empathy judges have contempt for the people and apply their own views because they think they know better. Rule-of-law judges believe in representative democracy; empathy judges believe in the elitism of the intellectual. By disregarding the language of legislative enactments in favor of their own feelings, empathy judges demonstrate their contempt for individuals.
The defense of personal sovereignty is not founded upon positions on specific programs or issues, it is a philosophical defense of the individual that extends to all programs and issues. Not every tax or program is an attack on the individual, but a political approach that treats the individual as an ATM from which to withdraw government funds is such an attack and must be fought.
When judges interpret ambiguous language, they are doing their jobs, but when judges ignore clear and unambiguous language in a statute or contract in order to reach the result they personally desire, they are showing their distrust and contempt for individual decisionmaking and individual value. While manifesting itself in specific decisions, the real issue is the broader philosophical problem that yields such results.
It remains to be seen how vigorously Mitt Romney would fight the vast expansion of federal power, but there is no doubt that another four years of President Obama would yield even more of what we have seen the last four years -- the relentless growth of government power and intrusion into the most private details of our lives and the continued seizure of economic activity and individual freedoms. A Supreme Court already shaky in its defense of liberty would, under Obama II, become an eager participant in dismantling our constitutional protections.
We simply cannot allow this to happen.
We must elect Mitt Romney and give him a conservative Congress that will not only support his initiatives, but guide him on the course of liberty and individual freedom.
In Michigan, we must vote for Justice Markman, Judge O'Brien, and Justice Zahra for the Michigan Supreme Court.
As Mark Levin put it so eloquently in Ameritopia:
It seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of man.
