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…
