WOLF: Only the voters can save America now

Washington has broken with concept of self-governance

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf

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The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.
As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now?

First, we mourn. We mourn that a nation built on the principle of limited government has grown the largest government in the history of humankind. We mourn that our Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare into Obamatax to allow for the individual mandate. We mourn that once again we read the lips of a president who promised he would not raise our taxes but did so anyway. We mourn that Washington no longer rules with the consent of the governed.
But this mourning, as appropriate as it is, must be short-lived. This struggle for our liberty, this struggle to abide by the principles of our founding begins anew. We can no longer trust that Washington will save the great experiment of self-governance that is the United States of America. Just as it has always been, the fate of our republic rests in the hands of the voters.
It’s now down to this: If Barack Obama holds the White House, and if Democrats win control of either house of Congress, then Obamacare will be unstoppable, and America will become the United States of Europe. We will have sacrificed our freedom and our exceptionalism for the false promises of the government-centered society. The 2012 election just became infinitely more important.
As the adage goes, Americans get the leaders we deserve. That our generation even allowed America’s fate to rest in the hands of nine men and women who upheld a law antithetical to the concept of limited government and individual freedom is a testament of our lost way. It’s time we stop hoping for better leaders and start becoming better citizens. It’s time we deserve better leaders.
Obamacare was forced upon us by 219 representatives, 60 senators and one president. Simply put, their time in office must end. As I’ve said before, politically speaking, we must level their cities and salt their fields. The barren wastelands of their once-promising careers will be a stark reminder to future would-be statist politicians who are willing to betray the will of Americans and break the covenant of our Constitution.
Only the voters can save America now.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is a radiologist and President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at miltonwolf.com.