GAZETTE COLUMN: 4TH OF JULY - INDEPENDENCE BORN OF UNITY by John P. Flannery

Flag waving (photo – J. Flannery)

We declared our independence of a foreign nation and succeeded because we were united.

But not as a confederation, as a re-constituted United States lest our revolution in 1776 be quickly overrun by foreign nation states taking advantage of a government lacking the resolve to resist foreign intervention and to provide for its citizens' general welfare.  Thus, we wrote a Constitution in 1787 that enumerated powers we thought a central government needed to execute on our behalf.

We fought a civil war among ourselves between factions favoring union under that constitution and nullifiers who wanted to go it on their own as separated states.  We haven't stopped having that fight.

This past week the United States Supreme Court decided that Congress has the power to insure that it's citizens have health care.  Virginia's Governor resents the federal government telling any State what to do, preferring instead that some of our friends and neighbors go without medical treatment and even die.

We didn't fight to form an independent nation to fail each other.

We didn't fight and kill each other in a civil war to reaffirm the character of our nation, as united, so that we could reverse field, and argue anew that the states should decide independently, separate from each other, what is best for the nation, thus dividing and weakening the nation once more, ironically advocated this go-round by the political party that originally fought and argued for union during our civil war.

We insist we are an "exceptional" nation but for most of my life, we have failed to take care of many of our sick and dying if they couldn't afford care.  We have been "exceptional" in that other nations have long provided for the health of their citizens while we have not.  We have Medicare if you are over 65.  We have health care for Veterans.  Same for our elected officials.  This health care program, the Affordable Care Act, was long overdue and the proof of this is how it has already given hope to young adults and saved lives and has such great potential to save many other lives including a parent, sibling or child you may know and love.

Chief Justice John Roberts has been roundly criticized by the state nullifiers for upholding the affordable care act's insistence that there be no freeloaders who get health care without participating or paying a penalty if they opt out.  But what Justice Roberts really did was say that Congress had the power under the constitution to make that call.

The Chief Justice affirmed the rule of law over whatever personal political bias some may have ascribed to him because of his nomination by a conservative Republican President.  The Chief Justice also restored some lost dignity to a Supreme Court seen as political in a past presidential campaign when it decided the election of our chief executive by a court decision and, in a separate decision, when the Supreme Court unleashed wealthy "fat cat" contributors to buy elections.

When upholding the Affordable Care Act, the Chief Justice did seek to limit congressional authority when invoking the commerce power.  Other Justices disagreed.  This judicial approach hearkens back to Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison where restraint in one decision strengthened the Court's hand ever afterwards.  It has empowered the Court to say what law is constitutional or not, a power you won't find stated anywhere in the Constitution, that a co-equal branch, the Supreme Court, has the last word on whether Congress wrote a law that was constitutional or not and why.

Justice Roberts may have sought to limit the power of Congress when it invokes the commerce clause in the future.  Judicial economy would have suggested he need only say why the Affordable Care Act was constitutional.  But it is refreshing to have a national dialogue about something that really matters for a change - the health of the nation and how our government may make a difference for the better.

Our nation has been hard pressed in recent years to show the advances in policy and practice that we insist are so peculiarly American, reflecting our independence in favor of freedom.

This Health Care Act and the judicial dialogue that sustained it advanced our nation's  promise to give hope by what we have accomplished, and hope that, if we remain united, resist the impulse to divide and separate, we can achieve so much as a nation in the name of our independence in favor of the freedom and well being of our own people and as a standard for how other nations treat their own.