Ryan ChartrandThe last presidential debate saw moderator Tom Brokaw ask the candidates whether they thought healthcare was a right or a responsibility. Predictably, the answers split along party lines, with Obama stating his belief that healthcare is a right and McCain declaring it a responsibility. While I harbor no secret partiality towards either candidate and consider them both alike helplessly inadequate and tragically misguided, I must confide that on this particular point McCain trounced Obama.
McCain’s clarity on this point deserves further elaboration. Recognizing healthcare as a responsibility, McCain spoke, however briefly, as an Old Republican. However, McCain is far from being a classical conservative, and I suspect that he and most of his constituents have only a partial understanding of the nature of rights versus responsibilities.
The word “right” is thrown around very frivolously and recklessly these days. Unfortunately, many Americans enjoy it when politicians misuse language. These people ostensibly find it pleasing to the ear to be told that they have rights to any number of things, from education, to jobs, to healthcare. It’s an understandable sentiment. Life is a scary and uncertain affair, and certainty, even false certainty, allows people a little comfort and security.
On the language of rights, the language is so hopelessly muddied as to be incomprehensible. This is an ideal Orwellian condition for politicians to exploit and they do so readily and ably. This is not good. We cannot hope to defend and preserve something, even something as important as our rights, when it has a fluctuating definition.
What should we accept as the definition, the foundation, of our rights? The logical and consistent definition, of course. That quest is best answered with a Lockean definition of rights, which essentially recognizes a single negative right, that is, the right not to be troubled so long as one does not initiate violence against another. This is the principle tenant of Libertarianism, often referred to as the principle of nonaggression. It is little understood nowadays, but in bygone years this concept had great resonance with the American public and our Founding Fathers. Its articulation is best seen in that pithy declaration that all are endowed with the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
There is inadequate space here to grant the topic of rights the full discussion it deserves, but in making some sense of the recent presidential debate it is helpful that we understand at least one implication of the above definition of rights. Inalienable rights stand alone; they cannot be given nor taken away. That is, if one is the sole individual on the face of the planet, he still enjoys these undisputable rights. No other individuals need exist to maintain or procure these rights for anyone else. This happens to be one of the surest and simplest litmus tests. If a right cannot be enjoyed without another person procuring it, it is not a legitimate right.
So to borrow a recently scandalized phrase, why put lipstick on a pig? Politicians must realize some advantages from tampering with the language. I’m afraid they do. It is no exaggeration to point out that such misuse of language is a veil for legalizing plunder.
Recall that a Libertarian definition of rights makes no impositions on anyone. Does the “right to healthcare” enjoy the same status? Of course it cannot. This false right embraces the notion that a person or group of persons has a right to someone else’s property (without a mutually arranged payment). Is this not a form of slavery?
Can one group of people be compelled to finance or otherwise provide another group a service or good? Obviously, it can with the use of force. But perhaps the more poignant question is, “Are we comfortable with a democracy that allows one group to enslave another group?”
In the face of common sense, many politicians state the completely unbelievable: that healthcare (or whatever else may be your favorite cause) is a right. Rather than weakening actual rights by misusing language, it is better to make a distinction, albeit unpalatable to some. Call them “government rights,” or the “right to other people’s property.” Call it socialism.
Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate and the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club. “Don’t Tread on Me” will appear in the Mustang Daily every Wednesday as a weekly political column. You can contact him at LibertarianColumn@gmail.com.