The Chief Justice’s Assault on Democracy

I have substantially revised and expanded my prior post regarding the Chief Justice. It is now a full-length American Thinker article entitled “What Hath Roberts Wrought?” In it, I critique a particularly disingenuous line from Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion: 

                              It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. 

Although the line has been accepted and even praised by many conservatives, in my view, it is very misleading at best, and slander of “the people” at worst. Roberts’ unpersuasive attempt to have his cake and eat it too, by both denying and asserting that the ACA imposed a tax, is worse than mere internal incoherence. It is, in reality, a debasement of political choice.

If, as is now well known, Roberts calls a tax what all those who imposed the law denied was a tax (and still do), both in repeated public statements and in the express language of the legislation, he is in no position to condemn “the people” for their choices. Roberts has validated misinforming the very people he expects to make informed choices. It borders on outright slander to blame the people for a monstrosity they were never told they were voting for and a majority of whom vehemently opposed from day one.

Even worse, Roberts has committed a frontal assault on the democratic process. If politicians can deliberately mislead the people with the assurance that the Supreme Court will declare they did not mean what they said, voting becomes meaningless. My article expands upon this:  

In protecting deceit, Roberts smashes to smithereens his grandiloquent bromide disavowing Court vigilance regarding supposed political choices of the people. How can the people be held responsible if they have no idea what they are choosing...? If the likes of John Roberts are not going to hold elected legislators accountable for their actual words, the people should not be lectured about "consequences of their political choices."