For all the banter thrown around about the SCOTUS ruling on healthcare law, it is a little disconcerting about how few people actually understand what the court was ruling on, and the ramifications of the final verdict.

The Supreme Court is not there to weigh out the merits of universal healthcare, or the coverage of pre-existing conditions, and the other particulars. The only question before it was the constitutional question- “Can the Federal government force an individual, simply because they are alive, to buy a product?”. On its face, it seems absurd, but that is the only germane question they had to wrestle with. To take it to the logical extreme, if the answer is “yes” then I would like to pass a law saying that everyone, under penalty of law, must buy a new Toyota. After all, everyone needs to travel in a car sometimes. Otherwise, they have to take public transportation, or bum a ride from someone else, in either case, they are becoming a burden on others around them. An individual mandate that everyone buys a new Toyota solves that problem, and we won't have so many old clunkers breaking down, with big repair bills. The law would be doing everyone a favor. Especially Toyota dealers.

The ruling on Thursday gave the answer. “Yes”. The government can tell you that you must buy a product, even a product from an evil, for-profit corporation. The rationale behind it is that the refusal to buy the product carries a fine from the IRS- an additional tax. And, (here is the punchline) the federal government can create and levy a tax anytime, anywhere, for whatever foolhardy thing they want, and send the IRS after you to levy, audit, punish, seize your assets and even imprison you if you don't pay it. This might explain why the Healthcare law allocates millions of dollars to the IRS for enforcement. For those paying attention, they may recall that during the budget debate over the healthcare law, a large part of the revenues for the law was from those fines.

So the bottom line is that yes, the government can force individuals to buy a product- any product- as long as the penalty for not buying it is a tax. As long as they can ram it through Congress, no matter how many falsehoods they can spread about it (ie. “It won't raise the deficit” or “this will lower health costs”). It doesn't even matter how regressive the tax is. In this case, it hits working class families the hardest, since a “family” pays more for health insurance than a single person, or a couple. It disproportionately hurts small entrepreneurs, since they don't have a larger company plan to come under. It favors public employees, who tend to have a better benefits package with healthcare included as a pension. You now can be told what you have to spend your money on, or face the wrath of the IRS, with penalties, interest rates, and fees that no bank in America could ever get away with.

So before people start dancing around saying “hooray! Our side won” consider what was lost. This represents the biggest tax hike in our country's history. Even more disturbing, it codified as a precedent, that government can force you to do ANYTHING as long as the penalty for not doing that thing is a tax. That represents a terrible reversal in individual rights in the United States. This wasn't a “Democrats win” and “Republican lose” ruling. This is losing proposition for all Americans. Perhaps, except for the health insurance companies. Whom you now have to buy from, courtesy of Obama, Congress, and Justice Roberts.

 With the insane costs of a college education these days, it is impressive to see a philanthropist offering to donate an entire college campus to the right institution for free.

The sprawling 217 acre campus in Northfield, Massachusetts was once home to Northfield Mount Hermon Prep school, but that school consolidated with another school  in 2005, and its been vacant ever since.  The current owners, the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby craft stores, has owned it since 2009, and are willing to donate it. 

The catch?  You just need to be running the school in accordance with the original Christian educational principles that the school was founded on.   The campus itself was originally built by the Evangelist D.L. Moody, who used it as a his headquarters and meeting place after the great Chicago fire destroyed his home and church in 1871.  Moody is frequently credited as being an architect of the Second Great Awakening in the United States and England, with hundreds of thousands professing conversion during his meetings.

The Green's first intent was to revitalize the school themselves, naming it after the Christian scholar C.S. Lewis (Author of Mere Christianity; The Chronicles of Narnia, among other titles) but they realized the task was beyond their scope.

Liberty University, as well as a number of already established Christian colleges are weighing the possibility of accepting the Green's offer.