Creating the Inalienable
I love when a Progressive politician speaks plainly. Senator Harkin (D) from Iowa recently revealed the warped mindset (no, I don't mean YOU are warped) behind the entire political attitude of health care reform. He said:
...this bill is not complete. I've used the analogy of a starter home in which we can add additions and enhancements as we go into the future but like every right that we've ever passed for the American people, we revisit it later to enhance and build on those rights, and we will do that here surely.
The emphasis is mine. "Every right that we've ever passed"? What rights has Congress ever passed? What rights have they ever created? None. (And no, the "Civil Rights Act" does not count. It simply protected existing rights.) Rights are not "passed" nor are they created. They simply exist. They are, as Jefferson said, self-evident truths. People have been endowed with them by their Creator. They are not doled out by a benevolent Congress who decides from afar how each of us ought to live our lives. And yet, that is how our elected representatives act. That is the warped mindset so many of them posses – that they can create rights. It is, quite frankly, the same mindset that has lead to oppression and tyranny throughout the world.
He continued:
What this bill does is we finally take that step. As our leader said earlier, we take that step from healthcare as a privilege to healthcare as an inalienable right of every single American citizen.
It all sounds so benign does it not? So well intentioned? How can we not support health care for all?
Remember this: Anyone who claims the power to create inalienable rights, will also claim the power to eliminate them.
Posts
9 comments:
Thanks for posting this Adam.
I definitely take issue with the rights being 'passed' idea. Just absurd. Perhaps it was a poorly articulated comment. Perhaps it is indicative of the true belief of the speaker.
Nevertheless, I thought I'd open up the debate as to how healthcare is treated. Is it a right or is it something else that is 'passable'?
For instance, since health can feed into the pursuit of happiness, can it be determined, therefore, that it is an inalienable (though not passable) right?
Or since healthcare is directly related to life itself, is it therefore, a self-evident truth?
Health care is a product and a service. Nothing more. If it is a right, then why am I not also entitled to a new home? A new bike? Food, clothing, quality leisure time and a smoking hot wife? (I have that) All such become rights under the same pretense that anything that one might use to pursue happiness is a right.
The pursuit of happiness is undefined. That is what makes it what it is - an individual, personal, pursuit. When the government, or anyone else, starts claiming that XYZ is needed for that pursuit, then they can also claim that XYZ is not needed. And then we run into the typical problems of the Nanny/Opressive state.
Is marrying your chosen partner a right?
I don't think marriage is, by definition a right (it's a tradition). On a personal level I don't think gay relationships are a moral choice. But who cares what I think? That is why I don't think the Gov. (especially at the federal level) should have ANY input into that debate. If it must be involved, then I think the state level propositions and such that we are seeing is a good compromise.
But who you take home at night is no business of mine, and definitely no business of Big Brother. But neither is it the business of the Government to mandate that different Churches or organizations recognize marriages that contradict their theology. (which is why I've argued in the past the until same-sex marriage is framed as a religious issue, instead of a civil one, they will usually end up losing the democratic arguments)
The same is to be said of what health care procedures I want or need, what fatty, fried foods I want to eat, how much money I make, how I spend that money, what I think or say and whether or not I want to be a racist, bigot, or homophobe (I'm not those things, just making a point).
Health care will become dramatically more affordable, more efficient and more effective as soon as the "it's a right" mentality is jettisoned in favor of the "it's a product" mindset, and the meddling bureaucracy of government leaves it the hell alone.
I'll take the progressive side just for the sake of argument and point out that even if you concede that rights come from a source higher than government, a government protects and ensures rights that already exist by passing legislation to codify those rights.
I agree that creating a right by legislation and protecting a right by legislation is an important distinction to make. But again, just for the sake of argument, I raise the point that regardless of what the Framers may or may not have thought, there are those who feel that healthcare is the sort of right that fits within those God-given rights that fit into the pursuit of happiness, right to life, even the right to liberty.
But why stop at health care? And why health care? What makes it so special?
I agree, Adam. It's troubling. Under the hypothetical paradigm I'm arguing under, you don't have to stop at health care. That's what makes it kind of scary. That's also what makes it disappointing for those of us who were going to at least try and make the best of the Obama administration: there's been no cogent rationale as to why and how this is and ought to be a right and how exactly it's going to save us money to spend so much of it.
But theoretically, if there's a problem big enough, a lack big enough, that it's interfering with a troubling amount of people's right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., you could rationalize it that way. That's essentially how affirmative action was/is rationalized.
Whether or not it's a right is a pretty heinous sticking point in the process of improving healthcare in America. It seems to me that before we proceed with passing a bill to improve healthcare -- most especially because the concept at hand is that it IS A RIGHT -- that we ought to settle the debate about what healthcare is. And I think this ought to be settled via the people, not their representatives.
B: I've actually been cooking up a post about that. Essentially the entire Obamacare argument is being presented under an entirely false pretense: Which is, that health CARE is broken and needs fixing. When in reality it's the DELIVERY of the care that is borked. (I won't go into why it's borked here)
Giving the government power to deliver health care will do nothing to improve the quality or affordability of the it. In fact, there is a good argument, based on everything else the government delivers, that the quality and affordability will diminish. Drastically.
Chris: FDR famously tried to create a "second Bill of Rights" which is the ultimate example of what you are talking about. It guaranteed, more or less, a perfect life for everyone ("perfect" being defined by FDR...)
He said in the 1944 State of the Union:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
--
In the same speech he also proposed a tax system on any "unreasonable profits". In other words, he wanted people to be financially secure, but only just.
On principle, I'm not convinced that the "only" rights America does or can believe in are codified in the Constitution (or described in the Declaration) and I think it's narrow to do so. Both documents bring to the surface those rights that had until the Revolution been infringed upon and were part of 18th century natural rights theory.
That being said, if like most of us, you start from the premise that our rights are endowed by the Creator, I'd prefer to err on the side of less government in trying to figure out what rights might exist beyond the two documents mentioned above.
Even if you do want a right to marry, a right to health care, a right to anything else that FDR or his current progeny might dream up, I'd like to see those rights actualized by community action and not by bureaucracy. I understand that when you compare charitable donations among democratic nations and foreign aid, America is the most generous country in the world. I hope that looking to the government doesn't quash that too much and I hope that we (yes, I include myself) naysayers in the opposition party don't forget our responsibility to be charitable and giving to show the government that we don't need them to care for others.
Post a Comment