For as long as I’ve been politically aware, I’ve heard the term “right” thrown about in every context imaginable. Whether used in the standard context regarding Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of Happiness, or in regards to a “right” to affordable healthcare, affordable housing, free medicine, a job, free birth control, rights of the unborn, the right to bear arms. I could list such examples long into the night. But what is the true nature of a right? How can we objectively determine what are rights and what are merely privileges of living in a free society? That is the goal of this essay: to define the nature of a right, what should be considered a right, and what should not. I’d be terribly mistaken to assume my following contentions would be impervious to debate, but I at least plan to provide my line of logic and reasoning on the matter.
First, we must look at what exactly a right is and what facilitates it. Rights can be described as the fundamental principles and/or standards necessary to the proper maintenance of existence that cannot be justifiably denied of a law abiding person. As to what facilitates a right’s ability to indeed be a right, this is the key portion: A right can only be deemed such insofar as it is not dependent upon any other individual or group of individuals. Rights are of the individual and yielded from the individual, their very existence. There can be no other derivation of a right. Anything that helps to better the life of oneself we will deem, not a right, but a privilege, for the many comforts of Life are ensured to no man and overall, are not integral in securing the continuance of one’s Life; they simply make it more convenient to do so. Also, any benefit being derived from someone other than the sole individual concerned we shall call a privilege as well, for demanding a right that is dependent upon the production or skill of another enters into the field of coercion. Thus, for a right to be able to stand firm, it must be something that can be achieved in man’s natural state: solitariness. Society itself is man-made, facilitated through voluntary interactions, thus making the individual the sole concern of rights and from where they come. There is no such real, objective thing as a collective, a race, an advocacy group, a society, for these are all man-made societal constructs and are conditional upon one thing: the individual. All of these concepts are merely groups of individuals. This, and only this, is the reason why rights can only be derived from the individual. We will delve further into this when we look at what cannot be considered a right, but first, let’s look at what we can properly call “rights”.
Since we have established that rights are wholly of and from the individual, I’d like to take a look at some examples of what we can assert as rights. There are four I would like to point out specifically, all being intricately interwoven, dependent upon each other. These are the rights to Life, Liberty, Property, & Self-Defense. The essay I’ll be posting next Monday will deal specifically with the first three and their inalienability, so here, I would like to focus on how these three stem from each individual. Life and the right of one to possess it is inherently instilled within each person upon coming into existence. The axiom that “existence exists” solidifies this concept. Liberty is the ability of each person to choose how to live their life as they see fit, beholden to no man so long as they do not harm another. Property is a direct derivative of exerting the combined rights of Life and Liberty, each individual producing the necessaries of existence, turning those yields into that person’s property. To deprive a person of any of these would be to deprive them of all three. As I already stated, this is an extremely brief overview, a more detailed look already being prepared for next week, so let’s move on to self-defense.
Self-defense establishes itself as an individual right within its own name, “self” denoting this fact. The whole purpose of self-defense is to fend off those that would physically harm one’s Life, Liberty, or Property. Therefore, self-defense is only viable as a right conditional upon the existence of the previous three rights. If one did not have a right to Life, Liberty, or Property, there would be nothing for one to defend, thus further establishing the interdependency of the four rights I have asserted as being absolutely necessary, proper, and inalienable.
Now I would like to turn to principles that should not, cannot, be considered rights. The first I want to examine is the “right to health care” or “affordable health care”. The main and most important reason that this is by no means a right is that it is wholly dependent on more than the individual receiving the health care. This receiving presupposes that someone is providing it. But who? Even leaving the matter of taxpayer dollars being poured into socialized health care out of the equation, it leaves the biggest problem here: the doctor-patient relationship. Making affordable health care a right completely obliterates any notion of such a relationship. It makes the services, the efforts, the experience, the knowledge of the doctors subject to the whims of what the government deems to be “affordable” health care. The government at this point becomes an insurmountable middleman, dashing voluntary trade, dashing the very essence of Liberty from the situation. To coerce doctors to comply with “collectively” erected standards in regards to health care is essentially holding a gun to their heads, saying “Comply or face the consequences”. And thus, the years of research, study, and effort poured into their profession are wiped clean, for these doctors no longer provide health care of their own free will, but because a government, a people, have deemed, have demanded, healthcare as a right.
The same exact argument, no matter the “arena”, I would argue on principle alone. Whether it be the right to affordable housing, the right to a job, the right to birth control, etc. These are all dependent upon the producers of the world to provide it under government coercion. There is honestly no more I can say to defend it, for if one were to actually approve of the use of government coercion to make a producer, a doctor, a businessman, a builder, no matter the case, to provide their services for a pre-determined price, eliminating free will, the battle has already been lost, and Reason will not appeal to that person’s line of thinking.
Sadly, these are the times we live in. These horrors are becoming realities, as seen with the Affordable Care Act. I do not want to be misunderstood. I want progress. I want the citizens of every country to thrive, live, to be the Masters of their own Fates. But for this state to exist, a system of governmental coercion can not be, can never be, the answer when speaking of voluntary trade. I will sign off this week with the words of a Frenchman come to America, observing the opportunities here, observing the Liberties we so often take for granted:
“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”
-A. de Tocqueville
Until next week, friends.
Take Care.
-Brad
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