ACA case is about freedom . . . but in a dark way
March 29, 2012
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate writes about the questioning over the individual mandate and finally comes to understand why the right has kept talking about this being an issue of freedom. They want to be free of of covenant, our social contract, our commitment to the common good. Lithwick writes:
This morning in America’s highest court, freedom seems to be less about the absence of constraint than about the absence of shared responsibility, community, or real concern for those who don’t want anything so much as healthy children, or to be cared for when they are old. Until today, I couldn’t really understand why this case was framed as a discussion of “liberty.” This case isn’t so much about freedom from government-mandated broccoli or gyms. It’s about freedom from our obligations to one another, freedom from the modern world in which we live. It’s about the freedom to ignore the injured, walk away from those in peril, to never pick up the phone or eat food that’s been inspected. It’s about the freedom to be left alone. And now we know the court is worried about freedom: the freedom to live like it’s 1804.
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