Redefining our rights

Butch, the school bully, is sitting at the cool kid’s table watching over the proceedings of… Butch, the school bully, is sitting at the cool kid’s table watching over the proceedings of the middle school cafeteria. Johnny, minding his own business, is enjoying his lunch: a delicious peanut butter sandwich, two red apples, a bag of chips and a juice box.

Laura – pity on her soul – has only a meager bottle of milk. Compelled by a higher power to correct this evident disparity in the allocation of lunch resources, Butch accosts Johnny and demands the second apple be given to poor Laura.

Considering Johnny’s small stature and general disinterest in conflict with someone so powerful, he quickly hands over the fruit and hides his face in fear of more aggression. Laura’s eyes light up when the apple is placed before her. But it is Butch who feels best after the escapade, for he has done God’s work.

If Butch were the federal government, Johnny the medical industry and Laura was the uninsured, then you would essentially have the Democratic presidential candidates’ positions on heath care. Unfortunately for the freedom lovers in this country, both Democratic presidential candidates support a much greater role of the federal government in the health care system. In Thursday’s CNN Democratic Debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said, “We have to say to [health insurance companies] that they can no longer deny coverage to anyone and they have to cover everyone, including every pre-existing condition.”

The freedom of a company to decide to whom it will give its services is in serious danger if Clinton, or any other Democrat, is elected president. And how does Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., plan on providing health care to everyone who wants it? One part of his plan, according to his official website, “will force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration.” Obama and Clinton will slam down the federal government’s iron fist, crushing the economic freedom of businesses.

Mention the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping or Guantanamo Bay to liberals and the pits of hell will consume their eyes.

It’s baffling that progressives can complain about programs they claim are destroying liberty and the American way under the Bush administration, while at the same time supporting universal health care, a policy based on a belief antithetical to liberty: the right to health care. Evidently, liberals are only concerned about the coercion of terrorists, not American doctors and businesses.

The infallible liberal logic dictates that Americans have a right to MRIs, heart transplants and cough medicine, with no regard to the ability to pay. In essence, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies will be stripped of their freedom to refuse service.

No longer will the medical industry have control over the fruit of their labor. Democrats like Clinton and Obama would replace freedom by a right to health care that conflicts with the liberties of other Americans.

Where does this ridiculous notion derive its foundation? In 1948, the United Nations proclaimed through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.” Thankfully, the United States hasn’t attempted to fully adopt such a destructive notion. Instead, we have declared the most moral definition of a right, i.e. rights should never obligate action from others.

The U.S. legal system protects the freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your freedom to life doesn’t mandate me or anyone else keep you alive. Your liberty and pursuit of happiness don’t require me to limit my liberty to aid yours. The alleged right to health care inherently violates the very nature of a moral freedom. Americans don’t – and never should – have the right to another American’s skills, trade or services. We have as much of a right to lollipops, BMWs and Campbell’s Soup at Hand as we do to health care.

Republicans, unfortunately, are too fearful to call out Democrats on their plan to abandon the moral definition of a right and replace it by a feel-good, populist definition that obliterates the fabric of liberty essential to this country’s political identity. Therefore, it is left to the American people to stand up against the withering of economic autonomy and demand only government intervention that is in sync with independence and the Founding Fathers’ understanding of God-given rights.

E-mail Gregg at gjs22@pitt.edu if you, too, fear economic dictators.