Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

What about my rights?

The United States is a government that was formed to protect the rights of its citizens. When the founders declared their independence from Great Britain, they began their declaration by asserting that all men have certain unalienable rights, given to them by God and not by any government of man. They declared that governments were established to secure and protect those rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

The founders emphasized this further by enacting the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These amendments enumerated several rights that the founders believed need absolute protection from the abuses of government. Remembering that our rights come not from the government, but from God, they realized that the simple enumeration of rights would be incomplete and so the ninth amendment was necessary.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Our interpretation of our rights has varied over the centuries since these words were put down in ink. Even the interpretation of where our rights come from has varied. We refer to our "constitutional rights" as though they were granted to us not by God, but by the Constitution. This is a mistake.

The United States Constitution only enumerates some of our rights. The Declaration of Independence and the ninth amendment to the United States Constitution should make it clear — our rights do not have their source in the government. Each of the rights that we enjoy as citizens of the United States are the rights of men and women the world over. This is true whether they are citizens of the United States or not.

This is certainly at the root of some of the controversy that surrounds the detention of the enemy combatants at Guantanamo. After all, even enemy combatants have unalienable rights. This is why, despite what you may have read, the detainees there are treated in many ways better than the soldiers that guard them. Our military recognizes their rights.

Other nations enumerate and recognize different rights than the United States does. In some cases they may recognize rights that the United States does not. In others they may not recognize rights that the United States does recognize. This shouldn't be surprising. Governments after all are creations of men and by definition imperfect.

That imperfection comes as a consequence of the imperfection of men (and women, I don't want to fall into that PC trap). In fact, the imperfection of men is one of the reasons we need governments in the first place. Wherever there are more than a few people, it is certain that there will be conflict because of that imperfection. People will assert their rights, and those rights will come into conflict.

The history of the world is in a sense a history of that conflict.

Much of today's politics centers around rights. We hear about "the right to choose", the "right to life", the "right to dignity", the "right to die", and the "right to free health care". We hear about the rights of immigrants, both legal and illegal. We hear about the rights of women, and the rights of Muslims. We hear about the "right to not be offended".

I've already written at length about the conflict between the "right to choose" and the "right to life". It's a fair bet that I didn't even begin to cover the wide range of controversy surrounding that issue. It's also a fair bet that I won't with any of these other issues. But then, I'm only one man among billions, and that's why comments are enabled on my blog.

Some of the political tension regarding "rights" issues probably isn't really about the existence and protection of rights, but rather "entitlements". That's almost certainly the case in the health care debate.

Increasingly we are told that we have a "right" to health care. I wonder about that. It's certainly true that many of us want health care. After all, health is an important factor in longevity, and the vast majority of us want to live as long and as well as possible. The founders recognized this when they enumerated the first three of our unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Why then didn't they say "Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and free quality health care"? Could it be that they didn't recognize a right to health care? Or is this another one of those unenumerated rights that the ninth amendment speaks of?

It certainly wasn't an issue in 1776 anyway. When the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain the right to health care wasn't one that the crown was perceived to be guilty of suppressing. Obviously we can't look to the founders to resolve this particular issue.

Or maybe we can… If we look at the rights that are enumerated, we can find a common thread. Every one of the enumerated rights has to do with what people may do and expect to be able to do. We all have the right to life, simply by virtue of living. We all have the right to liberty and we will fight to be free. We all have the right to the pursuit of happiness, and we're going to pursue happiness whether the government sanctions it or not.

We have the right to practice our religion, and many of us will fight for it. We also have the right not to have another person's religion imposed upon us. We have the right to speak freely. We have the right to write what we will. We have the right to bear arms.

Each of these rights is basic. These rights don't derive from other people. We don't have to deny someone else their rights in order to obtain these. These are truly rights.

The so-called right to health care is something different entirely. Healthcare isn't something that exists independently of the people that provide it. Without centuries of study and experimentation, our modern day notion of health care wouldn't even exist. Without decades of training no man or woman could even qualify to provide health care.

That training doesn't come for free. In fact it comes at considerable expense. A prospective doctor makes quite an investment in his or her future when they go to medical school. It's only natural that they expect a return on that investment.

Medicines aren't exactly free either. Some medicines exist in the natural world, and so they might be thought of as free. Discovering them takes time and experimentation though. While the benefits of certain tree barks in reducing inflammation and pain are recognized, the isolation of the compound that provides those benefits required a lot of research. Today, aspirin is considered a "miracle drug". It's still not "free".

Should it be? Somebody still has to go to the trouble of manufacturing it. That requires capital investment. It requires skilled labor to assay it for quality and purity. It requires labor to run the processes and to package it.

Other drugs require massive investments in time, money, and research to develop. Clinical trials are required to ensure that they are safe and that they actually work. Shouldn't the corporations that spend this time, money, and effort expect to reap the rewards of their investment?

Of course, not all of the investment in money for modern health care is made in the "private sector". Some of that investment is made with government funds. This is often used as an argument that the public has a right to the fruits of that investment. I won't deny that to a certain extent that argument is true.

My point though is that health care is a "service" provided by people that have their own unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Simply by choosing the health care profession they do not give up those rights, particularly the latter two.

That's fundamentally different from our enumerated rights. Those rights are rights inherent in the fact that we live and are human. Health care is a service provided by people. I don't believe that we have a right to compel services from others.

To me the question of the "right to health care" comes down to two essential points. First, if we have a "right" to health care that the government must protect and enforce then health care provides have no "right" not to provide health care for profit. Essentially by choosing the health care profession they have chosen slavery to the government.

Second, if we have a "right" to health care and the government is required to provide it for us then we must give up certain other of our own rights. If the government provides our health care, then the government aught to be expected to do so in a cost-effective manner.

We've seen how effective the government is at providing any service in a "cost-effective" manner. Usually the costs continually rise and the quality of service deteriorates. We can see this in the British health care system and the Canadian one as well. People are forced to wait months for care. Care is denied because it's too expensive.

When the government runs your health care, they'll run other aspects of your life too. Do you smoke? They'll deny you health care because smoking is bad for you. Do you drink? One day they'll deny you a liver transplant, because alcohol is damaging to the liver. The next day they'll give you a heart transplant, because small daily doses of alcoholic beverages have a beneficial effect on heart health. Do you eat margarine? The government will look upon that with favor because it doesn't contain animal fats… no wait… they'll look on it with disfavor because it contains "trans fats" and those are bad for you.

We've heard politicians say that the government should run our health care system. We've heard those same politicians say that the government should require us to have regular doctor's visits. Politicians are banning certain foods, mandating certain other foods for our children, making judgements on our behaviors and in all manner of ways infringing upon our liberty and our right to make choices for ourselves.

Government run health care isn't a right. It's slavery. It's the antithesis of our rights.