There was an interesting review in the NY Times Book Review this past Sunday about a book which runs in a long line of books about voter psychology which try to explain why Joe Sixpacks vote against their economic interests, for Republicans. The bottom line was that people start with a position, often based on some sense of what's right and then "reason" back to where they wanted to go in the first place.
So, if what's right is we should work hard for ourselves and our families and we should not be asked to help others who have not worked as hard, then we will look at any argument and come home to that "moral" place.
So, if you are looking at a law passed by a government which wants to make you help pay for someone else's healthcare, you will invoke words like freedom, liberty, taxation without representation, images of the government making you buy broccoli, grave sites, etc. all to get back to the place you actually started from: I'll help myself, and my family, but I don't want to help my fellow citizens, people I don't know, who likely don't deserve my help.
Justice Scalia invoked all this rather baldly, saying no 25 year old who is not currently ill should be made to contribute to a pot of gold which is most likely going to be used for some 70 year old.
Of course, in making that argument, he's just rejected the whole notion of Medicare and Social Security.
The phantom, if you look back among the blogs, predicted the Supreme Court would vote 5-4 to blow Obamacare out of the water: Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts + Kennedy.
The make up of the Congress, the will of the people (whatever that kaleidoscope may be at any given moment), the votes in the House and the Senate matter not. You've got 5 young Republicans on the Court and the will of George W. Bush will last into the next decades.
This is one of the ways the rich stay rich and the powerful retain control in this land of the free, home of the brave.
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