For the past hundred years, citizens of the United States shared one common holiday, regardless of faith, race, or sex. Though it has never appeared on any calendar, we marked a day upon which we managed to slip free of our shackles and buy our way out of indentured servitude. In 1900, it fell on Jan. 22. By 2009, the last year President George W. Bush scheduled the event, it had been pushed back to the first week of May. This year, most expected it to be held during the first week of August. It was, of course, Tax Freedom Day—the day when American workers stopped toiling to pay their government, and began working for themselves. Sadly, barring Constitutional challenges, we’ll never see another one.

True freedom, thanks to Obama’s health care reform, no longer exists in the United States.

What we have now is a system where, each month for the rest of his or her life, each American will purchase their freedom by writing a check to a federally approved insurance company. The size of that check remains to be seen, but there’s not a single estimate that shows it declining.

If they fail to pay the mandated bill, they’ll face investigation at the hands of the IRS. If the government decides they’re unable to cover the cost, someone else will be forced to pick up their slack. The more the population grows, the more there will be people who will be unable to pay. The cost to those who are footing the bill will increase in perpetuity. If Obama’s plan stands, our formerly inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will never be less expensive than they are right now.

If a citizen refuses to pay, they’ll face the consequences. So far, we’ve been told those penalties will be financial in nature. However, mere months ago, both Obama and Pelosi suggested they’d be fine with seeing jail time imposed. Is America really willing to trust that the concept of such punishment has been abandoned? That the United States has become a country where failure to buy a commercial product could even conceivably result in the loss of freedom simply boggles the mind.

Yet, here we are.

Perhaps if the bill solved some fundamental problem, there could be a justification. Yet it fails, spectacularly, to achieve every goal which it attempts to address.

According to the AP, the plan will make coverage more expensive, not less.

According to the Heritage Foundation, it will increase taxes, the deficit, and unemployment.

According to the CBO, once you factor in the Docfix legislation that Pelosi has promised to pass later this year, the new medical system instantly adds to the deficit.

According to a recent survey of doctors, it will cause a whopping 46% of medical practitioners to consider leaving the profession, worsening the nation’s physician shortage and lowering the quality of overall care.

All of the particulars, however, pale in comparison to the damage it will do our freedom.

In an instant, Obama’s legislation has paved the way for government involvement in every conceivable corner of our lives. From what we eat to where we live, from where we travel to how we get there, every single thing we do has some impact on our health. Our environment, our homes, our clothes – all of it – will now be subject to federal scrutiny. Should they decide that your diet, your lifestyle, or firearm ownership leads to increased health care costs, what’s to keep them from taxing you into submission or banning the offending practice?

To attain this level of control, the Democrats have passed a bill of unprecedented unpopularity. In so blatantly thumbing their noses at the overwhelming majority of their constituents, they have ignored the notion that a government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Every member of Congress who voted for this monstrosity has now turned their back on the most basic concepts of individual liberty.

In the wake of health care’s passage, many have been quoting Benjamin Franklin, who wrote “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Sadly, the sentiment only applies to the roughly twenty-three percent who desired this so-called “reform.”

The rest of us have seen our liberty stolen and replaced with the empty promise of security for which we never asked.

Where taxes may have once indentured us, at least our annual tax freedom was the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, from cradle to grave, our debt is unending.

Sunday night, Barack Obama and his congressional allies turned that nation of indentured servants into a nation of slaves.

Robert Laurie writes a daily political commentary blog, The Robalution. Robert holds a degree in English from Wayne State University, and has worked in advertising as a graphic designer and copy writer.