Getting it exactly right:
I’ve been on about this for ages – you can’t have a right to health care. Why? Because rights are something that individual human beings have – if you can’t, at least in theory, do it entirely on your own, then it isn’t a right, it is a privilege – and all privileges are determined by the larger society. We may decide to grant you the privilege of free health care, but you cannot demand it as a right…because just as Paul points out, if it were a right then you conscript – enslave – health care providers at will (this is also why there is no right to marry – it takes at least two people to have a marriage, and as you need the consent of another for the act, it is a privilege, not a right…and just as in all other privileges, society will determine the rules; and if those rules don’t fit your particular ideas, you still haven’t had your rights violated).
Our liberals want everything to be pitched in terms of human rights because that is the shortest rout to enslaving all of us – they want us to have so many “rights” that we have no freedoms. If we all have a right to food, housing, medical care, clothing, transportation, education, etc, etc, etc then it will take a lot of government power to make all that happen…and the more powerful government is, the less free the people are. The perfect, liberal world is where I have a right to everything but must get government permission before I do anything.
Paul’s statement is exceptionally timely – and I hope it sparks a nation-wide debate on the meaning of “human rights”…because that is another fight we of the right will win.
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