I Will Not Comply

Like most members of the Congress that passed it and, undoubtedly, the president of the United States who signed it, I have not read the entirety of the ill-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yet there is one aspect concerning that legislation of which I am certain: I will not comply.

I will not comply because I am a free citizen of the United States, not a subject of its government. I consider non-compliance with this monstrosity and the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that are to be enforced by an unelected bureaucracy, and that have left a gigantic carbon footprint on our environment and the United States Constitution, a duty.

Non-compliance is my executive order, and that order reads in part that I do not recognize any government’s claim on my action or inaction in the marketplace, nor upon any personal information I am unwilling to divulge.

I will not submit to a cabal who read George Orwell’s 1984not as a terrifying warning, but as an instruction manual. Nor will I submit to the dictates of those who attempt to trample the right of free speech of others in the halls of government who are warning us about the looming tyranny. I refer to those sons of liberty who, as Camus wrote, “are not all legitimate or to be admired. Those who applaud it only when it justifies their privileges and shout nothing but censorship when it threatens them are not on our side.”

If (when) the IRS or HHS or any other such entity attempts to extort a tax or fee of any kind for not participating in mandated commerce, they will be met with resistance. I will not pay any such tax or fee.

I live in Massachusetts, where, once upon a time, a spirit of resistance and independence animated much of the citizenry. But many here have devolved from the shot heard round the world to sheltering in place. Not I — nor many of my fellow Bay Staters, who are outnumbered but undaunted.