If the Geneva Conventions applied to logic rather than combatants, Chief Justice John Roberts would easily be convicted of the most heinous acts of torture and abuse. His majority opinion in Thursday’s Affordable Care Act decision was an act of brutality inflicted without mercy upon the faculty of reason.

The Supreme Court was asked to answer a rather simple question: Is the individual mandate provision that is the centerpiece of Obamacare constitutional? Roberts concluded that it simultaneously is and is not.

The chief justice got off to a good start in explaining at great length why Congress does not have the power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause to compel individuals to engage in commerce. That distinction is key.

The Obama administration insisted that the mandate regulated commercial activity that was going to happen, as everyone would need health care eventually. Roberts joined with justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in reaching the obvious and inescapable conclusion that although Congress absolutely has the authority to regulate existing interstate commerce, nothing in the Constitution gives Congress the power to force people to engage in commerce if they would otherwise choose not to. So far, so good.

Roberts then grasped, as a lonely man grasps at any social opportunity no matter how unappealing the company, for any possible legal justification for the mandate. He found one in an argument that both the Obama administration and Congress explicitly rejected in debating Obamacare and in the legislation itself, but which the administration asserted in court after the bill had become law.

The mandate, argued the administration, could be considered not a mandate at all, but merely a tax. That Hail Mary thrown to save the plainly unconstitutional mandate was caught by Roberts, who stumbled over the end zone with it. Victory at the last second.

But the mandate is not actually a tax. Obama said so. The law says so. Roberts said so in the first half of his decision before saying, well, if we just considered it a tax it would be constitutional.

It is an order by Congress, followed by a penalty for not complying with the order. Failure to pay the penalty carries not a single IRS consequence.

Roberts, in his misguided desire to defer to Congress rather than apply the plain language of the Constitution and case law, saved us from unrestricted servitude via the Commerce Clause by tossing us into it via the tax code.

Congress may now impose virtually any regulation on personal behavior as long as the punishment for failing to comply comes via the IRS. We have traded subjugation under the master’s right hand (the Commerce Clause) for subjugation under his left hand (the tax code).