A matter of life and death...

A wise man’s heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him toward the left.  - Ecclesiastes 10:2

A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, The naive proceed and pay the penalty.  - Proverbs 27:12

RCJr. tweeted a good question: are we as concerned about the slaughter of babies as we are about nationalized health care? Implicit in this question is that Roberts' National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius is no threat to innocent life.

But it is, and on a massive scale. Remember C. Everett Koop said, "for every Baby Doe there will be ten thousand Grandma and Grandpa Does." The bloodshed of innocents doesn't follow circumspect boundaries. It's contagious and has become a national epidemic here in these United States that is far worse than the governmental slaughters of the Third Reich or Rwanda.

Follow medical ethics and listen to physicians: they're already murdering patients, and that's without the sort of pressure they'll face as these unprincipled men inside the Beltway make more and more decisions concerning standards of care. The duty to be nice and utilitarianism are the only laws left among us, and neither provide the slightest protection for truth, justice, and human life. Which is to say you will kill your mother. And just like the Germans and Rwanda's Hutus, your justification will be that the government made you do it.

This is the fruit of Chief Justice Robert's so-called "brilliance." He's stuck one more dagger in the heart of constitutional government and the repercussions will be catastrophic...

Big talk about the limitations of the Commerce Clause is the "look at the birdie" allowing him to keep everyone's attention off his dagger to the sclerotic heart of our Tenth Amendment. So now we have one-fifth of our GDP brought under our anti-federalist D.C. superiors, and every bit of that money has to do with human life.  We're not talking about President Eisenhower's interstate system providing for the common defense, here.

We're talking about increasing drips of morphine suppressing vital functions in your son. Withholding food and water from your mother. Killing patients in order to harvest organs more likely to "take." We're talking about the feds telling you that you and your husband may not give birth because you're a carrier of hemophilia and you and your husband both have the recessive gene for cystic fibrosis.

One fifth of the economy, brothers and sisters in Christ; and every bit of it connected to precious human life! Behind his show of guarding the Commerce Clause from abuse, Chief Justice Roberts has put a dagger in the heart of the Tenth Amendment and that dagger has the gravest repercussions for our national river of bloodshed. It's spreading and, like Roe. v. Wade, no state will be able to stop it. The administrators of HHS are now firmly ensconced in the catbird seat and every last decision they make will be determined by the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

If you're one of those believing the chattering class as they tell you Chief Justice Roberts made his decision apolitically, you're either very young or hopelessly lacking in discernment.

For decades I've read the New Yorker and the New York Times which, with the Washington and Huffington Posts, are the spokesmen for the elite. They provide a living record of the pressures brought to bear on our judiciary to take bribes and pevert justice, as well as the fruit of those pressures. After watching them for decades you learn to recognize that fruit. That's what I'm saying about Chief Justice Roberts: he is just one more casualty of the attack dogs of the left who have spilled many gallons of ink and terabytes of bandwidth warning him against going off the reservation.

They have promised him his legacy will be shot to pieces if he politicizes SCOTUS by upholding the Tenth Amendment. They warn him not to engage in politics by judicial means. They threaten him with terrible consequences he may expect if he legislates from the bench. They'll have his hide. They'll excoriate and mock him as they do Justice Thomas. Or they will laud him as they have since he upheld nationalized health care.

You didn't know they've been issuing these warnings to Justice Roberts? If you're going to have an opinion on National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, you need to know the cost Chief Justice Roberts would have paid for protecting the Tenth Amendment and our form of government by voting with those members of SCOTUS who honor their vows to uphold our Constitution.

So, follow this: Chief Justice Roberts wrote an opinion claiming to be a disinterested party who decided NFIB v. Sebelius based strictly on the merits of the case, and he took his position and wrote his opinion because he didn't want to be accused of legislating from the bench--of using his authority to engage in sectarian politics and politicizing the judiciary.

Under threat of being accused of using his position for political purposes, the chattering class has gotten Chief Justice Roberts to change his opinion and to deny he did it for political purposes:

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments.  Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them.  It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

In this connection, more information is coming out about the process leading up to NFIB v. Sebelius. Evidence points to Chief Justice Roberts switching his vote at the last minute from the constitutional right to the political left. Why?

Here's Huffington Post's analysis:

In addition to private jostling within the Supreme Court, it appears that the public spotlight was a factor. The CBS report points to how Roberts pays attention to media coverage. With his court's reputation on the line, one source suggested that the chief justice became "wobbly"...

"Roberts pays attention to media coverage." Duh.

Noting well the blood bath following Bush v. Gore--all the leftist thugs brutalized SCOTUS for being "political"--Chief Justice Roberts flinched, thereby avoiding all the trash talk that would have been forthcoming from the chattering class had nationalized health care been overturned as the Tenth Amendment required.

By the way, have you noticed how I always refer to this beast as "nationalized health care" rather than, for instance, "Obamacare?" It's partly to avoid speaking flippantly about our President; but more, it's to point to the evils heading down the road toward us.

This beast will kill our mothers and fathers, and then it will kill us--just like it's been killing Hollanders for a generation, now.

Two last observations:

First, the death of the Tenth Amendment as Chief Justice Roberts brings one fifth of our economy inside the Beltway has repercussions far beyond utilitarianism at the margins of life, birth and death; it will also lead to a tremendous growth in persecution and (not too far in the future) martyrdom. Read Herbert Workman's Persecution and the Early Church. When politicians abandon every law except utilitarianism and getting along with each other, those who break both laws by proclaiming that Jesus Christ has been given all authority in Heaven and on earth and that He soon will judge us by His Father's very very Big Laws will have to shut up or die.

You see, the Tenth Amendment's subsidiarity is one of the last protections for the freedoms bequeathed us by our Founding Fathers. It's just possible that some of our states would have defended life and conscience. Thus our Founding Fathers gave us the Tenth Amendment.

If we refuse to defend our constitutional freedoms from the politicians presiding on SCOTUS; if we refuse to use the constitutional tool of impeachment given us to correct their wrongs; then you and every other principled citizen will suffer and be fired and gagged and sued and imprisoned and die. It has already begun as anyone with eyes to see recognizes and mourns. The intolerance of tolerance will rule over us, leaving no place for that one glorious institution where there truly is diversity, where there truly is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female.

I speak of the Church of Jesus Christ, the glorious Bride of Christ.

Second, if you're uncomfortable with me writing of large matters having to do with the Constitution and our consciences and hypocrisy and sin in this discussion of NFIB v. Sebelius because I can't know the motives of other men; if you think accusing (for instance) Chief Justice Roberts of being purely political in his jurisprudence is to lack Christian charity; here are a couple responses.

Chief Justice Roberts himself is the one who raised the issue of his motives by arguing in his legal opinion that he's not being political. He tells us his motives are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Are we not to evaluate this part of his opinion? How can we evaluate this part without speaking of his motives? He says his motives are right and he says it in his opinion: are we not to evaluate his public claim? Is the critical reading of this one legal opinion really a sin?

For decades my main concern with our judiciary at the national and state level has been that they are unwilling to stick to their vows to uphold the law (specifically our various constitutions). Rather than submitting to the constitutions over them and the citizens those constitutions belong to and protect, they see themselves as players and, blinded by conceit, they end up dupes for the rebellion against God's Law that defines the chattering class.

Those who have done the hard work of learning discernment and follow the judiciaries of our nation and states know this as surely as they know day follows night. Are they really not allowed to discuss it? Are they really not to call our judges back to truth and honesty and mercy and submission to authority? Is it really sin for them to warn our public servants of sin and righteousness and judgment? Must no one consider whether our judges have heeded these warnings to judges and rulers we find all through the pages of Scripture:

You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.  - Deuteronomy 1:17

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.  - Deuteronomy 16:19

This is politics, so here, especially, my judgments are fallible. But we live in a kairos, a critical time, and so we must not hesitate to judge. The stakes are anything but trivial.