I came across an old complaint about the Affordable Care Act during my Googlings, which criticized a law professor’s attempts to alleviate concerns about the penalty aspect of the individual mandate. Walter Dellinger told the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2011, according to Ann Althouse:

There’s a misimpression out there that… federal agents arrive in black helicopters dressed in fully equipped armed ninja costumes, kick down your bedroom door and drag you off at the point of bayonets to an insurance agency.

In fact, what — all that happens is that for those who are not otherwise exempted and — when they’re filling out their federal income tax return, if you’re not maintaining minimum coverage, you have to pay an additional 2.5 percent, much less than Social Security. That’s all that happened.

So in that sense, this great intrusion on liberty doesn’t approach any slippery slopes or exceed any understood limits in our legal culture.

The concern seems to be that the government will exercise its police power against people who refuse to cooperate with the insurance mandate, pay the fine, or respond in any way to what the law says. Believe me, I am very sympathetic to the argument that we must be vigilant against expansions of the government’s police power, but this is not one of those instances of government going too far. Besides that, I’ll be more sympathetic to concerns from the right over police overreach when they get more consistent about it.

If anyone truly believed that a government insurance mandate was a step towards tyranny, I would expect to see some amount of civil disobedience with regard to car insurance mandates. I mean, sure, no one has to drive a car, but try telling that to people who live in cities with good conservative leadership that lack broad access to public transportation. Doesn’t anyone have the courage and moral fortitude to risk imprisonment in order to protest this government infringement on our liberty to drive a vehicle? I’m sure a few have, but they don’t seem to have found any champions among the Supreme Court trial advocate crowd.

Prof. Dellinger’s attempt to alleviate concerns over the extent of police power under the ACA did not move Prof. Althouse much, who made a valid, if incomplete, point:

I thought the point of worrying about approaching slippery slopes is that we would otherwise accept one incremental intrusion after another and never see fit to draw the line and, thus lulled, we would lose our liberty.

I’m pretty sure people are “see[ing] fit to draw the line,” or at least yelling and stamping their feet really loud. My point being, legislation is an ongoing process, and unless there is a provision hidden in the ACA that prevents Congress from amending it—or even repealing it—through the legislative process, I’m only worried about the future threat of tyranny insofar as future legislators don’t do their jobs. Prof. Althouse seems to think that the ACA is an all-or-nothing deal, or something. I’m not really sure what she is saying.

Now, Lance Burri, who blogs as “The Troglopundit” (and therefore obviates any need I may have felt to make fun of him), is having none of this nuance crap. He sees how the ACA can already give the government the power to kick down his door.

So what happens if you refuse to pay the extra tax? And ignore the letters and calls ordering you to pay the tax? And refuse to obey when a judge orders you to pay the tax (and the interest, and the penalties)?

They may not arrive in black helicopters, they may not be dressed like ninjas, they may not have bayonets, and they won’t be dragging you to an insurance company. But sooner or later, “they” will kick down your door. [Emphasis in original]

Basically, Mr. Burri is saying that the government can enter his home and drag him off to jail, etc., if he repeatedly refuses to obey the law, up to and beyond disobeying direct court orders.

To Mr. Burri, I say the following: no shit.

If you want to refuse to obey the law on whatever principle strikes your fancy, that is your right. If you expect that there will be no consequences for that refusal, you are a fool. Anyone who has ever protested a law they deem unjust, if they fail to repeal it through legislative or judicial means, should understand that the police have a duty to enforce the law. We don’t have to agree with the arrest, nor do we have to sit by quietly if/when it happens. We can certainly have a discussion about how far is too far in enforcing the law. If Mr. Burri were to do everything he describes, and the police sent a SWAT team and multiple helicopters to arrest him while he ate breakfast unarmed (or even lightly armed), I would be one of the first people standing up for his rights and demanding changes to police procedures (it is worth noting that SWAT teams arrest unarmed people during breakfast all the time, so Mr. Burri hasn’t hit on anything new.) There is no basic get-out-of-jail-free card, however, for people who just don’t like a law, or even people who deeply believe that a law is unjust.

People have been engaging in civil disobedience to protest laws for a long time. It would be great if the people who don’t like the ACA understood the concept. Get ready to be arrested (liberals do it all the time), or run for the hills.

Photo credit: By Dmitry Pichugin [GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2], via Wikimedia Commons.