Immoral or Unconstitutional Government Decrees :: Politics Political Essays

Immoral or Unconstitutional Government Decrees Imagine this scenario and let's do a thought experiment. I'm ordered by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to perform, without compensation, cleaning services at a local senior citizen retirement home. I've not been found guilty in a court of law of a crime for which I'm being punished. I've simply been ordered by DHHS to work at the senior citizen home in the name of promoting the public welfare. Failure to comply means going to jail. I might seek a court injunction against DHHS's edit. But suppose the court ruled that DHHS had the authority to order me to perform cleaning services at senior citizen homes. I might take my complaint all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court only for the Court to rule: yes, under the U.S. Constitution's welfare clause, and the authority it gives Congress, I'm compelled as ordered by DHHS to perform cleaning services. My question to you is now that the courts have ruled, should I simply comply? You might rejoin by suggesting that the question cannot be answered unless additional information is supplied such as: Did Congress properly vote to authorize DHHS to order me to clean senior citizen homes? Did DHHS single me out or are other Americans assigned similar tasks? In other words, was there invidious discrimination? My response to your first set of questions is what does a vote have to do with the rightness or wrongness of the DHHS mandate? Would one determine the rightness or wrongness of rape, murder, theft and slavery by whether there was majority vote? To the second question, I would also ask does the rightness or wrongness of an act depend upon the number of people, a hundred people or millions of people, forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? Was slavery in our country okay because 4 million blacks were enslaved instead of just one? Does equality in servitude make servitude just? One might rejoin by saying, "All those arguments are neither here nor there; the law is the law and people should obey." I say balderdash! South Africa used to have apartheid laws that strictly controlled where blacks could live, work, and eat. Nazi Germany had anti-Semitic laws. In United States there was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Would you have obeyed those laws? Would you have approved of and sought prosecution of white employers who hired black workers in contravention of job reservation laws that were a part of South Africa's Civilized Labour Policy?