Take the opposite stance of any Times editorial, you can’t be wrong

I’ve long contended you can seldom go wrong by taking whatever it is The New York Times opines in its editorials and propound the opposite.

Today the Times editorialists rather obviously conclude that the whole ObamaCare debate boils down to a fundamental question about the power of Congress, and then they come down on the wrong side.

The editorial restates the arguments of Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett before a Senate panel that law’s requirement everyone purchase health insurance is beyond the enumerated powers in Constitution and cannot be assumed under a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

“We disagree,” the Times editorial states, “and so do years of judicial precedent. The Constitution contains limits on improper mandates by preserving a wide range of personal choices. And while the idea of penalizing people for not acting sounds ominous, it inaccurately describes the problem. When people don’t buy health insurance — because they can’t afford it or think they don’t need it — the cost of treating them falls on the national economy.”

They never bother to explain why the cost of “treating them falls on the national economy.” I can’t seem to find a right to medical care at the expense of others anywhere in the Constitution.

Might there be some contrary opinions on this matter?

Let’s see, how about federal Judge Roger Vinson in his ruling declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional:

“The problem with this legal rationale, however, is it would essentially have unlimited application. There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that — when aggregated with similar economic decisions — affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision that does not.”

Or maybe James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 45:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

How Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion in a case called Lopez:

“To uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action. … The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. To do so would require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated … and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local … This we are unwilling to do.”

Then there is Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 7 on the real reason for the Commerce Clause:

“The competitions of commerce would be another fruitful source of contention. The States less favorably circumstanced would be desirous of escaping from the disadvantages of local situation, and of sharing in the advantages of their more fortunate neighbors. Each State, or separate confederacy, would pursue a system of commercial policy peculiar to itself. This would occasion distinctions, preferences, and exclusions, which would beget discontent. The habits of intercourse, on the basis of equal privileges, to which we have been accustomed since the earliest settlement of the country, would give a keener edge to those causes of discontent than they would naturally have independent of this circumstance. We should be ready to denominate injuries those things which were in reality the justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest. The spirit of enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no  occasion of displaying itself unimproved. It is not at all probable that this unbridled spirit would pay much respect to those regulations of trade by which particular States might endeavor to secure exclusive benefits to their own citizens. The infractions of these regulations, on one side, the efforts to prevent and repel them, on the other, would naturally lead to outrages, and these to reprisals and wars.”

Back to the Lopez case for Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence:

“We have said that Congress may regulate not only ‘Commerce ... among the several states,’ … but also anything that has a ‘substantial effect’ on such commerce. This test, if taken to its logical extreme, would give Congress a ‘police power’ over all aspects of American life. Unfortunately, we have never come to grips with this implication of our substantial effects formula. Although we have supposedly applied the substantial effects test for the past 60 years, we always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power; our cases are quite clear that there are real limits to federal power.”

Thomas Jefferson had this to say:

“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.”

The Times collectivism is not embraced by all.