Ramifications of a Positive Right - what real Rights does it violate? - Granite Grok

Ramifications of a Positive Right – what real Rights does it violate?

One of my favorite economists, Don Boudreaux, easily demonstrates that when civil rights morph from the negative ones of the Constitution ("…Congress shall make no law…") to positive ones (e.g., FDR’s Second Bill of Rights), someone else’s Rights become violated.  In each and everyone of the cases that FDR posits, it is impossible to fulfill without first requiring someone else to have something taken from that.

Got it – actual freedom taken from someone, to give a faux sense of freedom to someone else.  And that is supposed to be Freedom as defined by the Founding Fathers?  The problem, our Educrats have done such a poor job, it seems that more and more citizens cannot figure this out (or has this been done with forethought?).

And that, my friends, is the road to tyranny – for that road basically says that all things are possible, provided you have the money and the lobbyists to convince the few to change a regulation or a law to take from others to fulfill your needs, or your "charity" to others.  The barrier to keeping a limited government is broken, as what cannot be broached in order to find the finances to provide a Right? 

Ronald Pies, MD, asserts that every individual has a “right” to “basic health care” – meaning, a right to receive such care without paying for it (Letters, Dec. 26).

The rights that Americans wisely cherish as being essential for a free society require only the refraining from action.  Your right to speak freely requires me simply not to stop you from speaking; it does not require me to supply your megaphone.

Not so with a “right” to “basic health care.”  Elevating free access to a scarce good into a “right” imposes on strangers all manner of ill-defined positive obligations – obligations that necessarily violate other, proper rights.  For example, perhaps my “right” to basic health care means that I can force Dr. Pies away from his worship service in order that he attend (free of charge!) to my ruptured spleen.  Or perhaps it means that I have the “right” to pay for my health care by confiscating part of his income.  If so, how much of his income does my “right” entitle me to confiscate?  Who knows?

And if Dr. Pies is planning to retire, do I have the “right” to force him to continue to work so that the supply of basic health care doesn’t shrink?  If Dr. Pies should die, am I entitled…

…– again, to keep the supply of basic health care from shrinking – to force his children to study and practice medicine?

Does my right to basic health care imply that I can force my neighbor to pay for my cross-country skiing vacation on grounds that keeping fit is part of basic health care?

Talking about “rights” to scarce goods and services sounds right only to persons who are economically illiterate, politically naive, and suffering the juvenile delusion that reality is optional.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Indeed – at that point, what is the meaning of Freedom and of Right to Private Property (which, incidently, was one of the main reasons for our Revolutionary War with Britain)?  The answer is it would be meaningless – for at that point, we merely work for the State to provide that which it has promised to others.  Sure, we may have the veneer of choice and the thinner slice of "mine", but what actually happens in practicality is that we have lost what this country started with – the notion that our government is supposed to work for us and not the other way around.

And now we hear that like in some European countries, activists are trying the schtick that even Internet access is a civil right.  When it morphs to being that our top bureaucrats are agitating for the same thing (vs our elected officials), we need to be very worried.

At that point, unelected desk jockeys of the Administrative State have decided what is good for us, and what is not – outside of the philosophy of the negative Bill of Rights and outside of Congress.  Is this what we want?  Is this what they should be doing?  Or are they merely willing dupes of the Progressive mantra that we all are too incapable of making the hard decisions for ourselves and providing for our selves.

Ask yourself – right now, they are deciding what Government will give you.  What will you do when they start deciding that you are not to have something else.

After all, Obama’s Administration has just brought back the Death Panels

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