The Right To Everything
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As is always the case with Dr. Zero, there are some broad-brush generalizations here about what conservatives and liberals believe. But the essay is nonetheless a useful antidote for that “no one should die because they cannot afford healthcare” meme floating around Facebook yesterday.
A taste:
Advocates of the Democrats’ socialized medicine program often speak of the “right” to health care, or more specifically the right to affordable health care or health insurance. This notion of rights bestowed by government is one of the basic tenets of modern liberalism, which is the mirror image of classical liberalism. It is a foundation that should be attacked by the defenders of liberty at every opportunity, because if one concedes this principle, the remaining logic of “soft” tyranny becomes inexorable. This is an argument that conservatives must never grow weary of having, because there will never come a day when it’s unnecessary to make it.
The Left became preoccupied with “positive rights” over the last century. The edifice of socialism is built on the idea that people who lack the necessities of life are not truly “free.” What good is the freedom of speech to someone weak from hunger? What use is the right of free association, when you’re dying of a contagious disease? If you accept the proposition that freedom from want is a pre-requisite for enjoying all other forms of freedom, the modern liberal world-view becomes much easier to understand. It should also be easy to understand why those who believe themselves deprived of those basic necessities would find this an appealing argument.
These “positive rights” are not a precursor to the rights described in the American Constitution. The whole concept is implacably hostile to the Constitution. The “right” to food, health care, a job, or the other staples of the socialist menu can only exist in the absence of individual rights. Most fundamentally, the State can only provide benefits to some by violating the property rights of others. This crucial concept of progressive taxation on individual income is based on the idea that the State has a moral right to confiscate and re-distribute resources, which transcends any individual citizen’s right to his own property.
Read the whole thing.
The Death of the Individual
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Dr. Zero tars with too broad a brush, here: collectivism is not by any stretch of the imagination a habit of mind that is confined to the port side of the political spectrum. There are plenty of right-leaning collectivists, George W. Bush being a notable example of recent vintage.
But that said, in attacking the contemptible soullessness of leftists who treat Mary Jo Kopechne as a mere egg to be broken for the sake of fashioning the great omlette of Ted Kennedy’s legislative accomplishments, he is en fuego.
The meme floated by the Left over the past few days, that Kopechne’s death was a reasonable price to pay for Ted Kennedy’s wonderful political career, is a brutally candid expression of the principle that even an individual’s right to live is negotiable – a commodity to be measured against the “needs of the many,” which the Left believes were far better served by Kennedy’s politics than Kopechne’s insignificant little life. The striking thing about the two most infamous expressions of this opinion, by Melissa Lafsky and Joyce Carol Oates, is how breezy they are. They don’t caution the reader to brace himself for an outrageous, controversial assertion, which the author plans to defend. Both Lafsky and Oates are rather wistful in tone. They don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t think Kopechne’s life for Kennedy’s legislative agenda was a sweet trade, the deal of the century for America. As Mark Steyn puts it, the Left doesn’t see why we should dwell on the bit players in the epic saga of Ted Kennedy’s life.
And:
Collectivism always becomes ugly and brutal. Frankly, every collectivist society before ours became openly murderous. There is no gentle way to deal with the human remainder from every equation the State designs. Liberals criticize capitalism by saying it doesn’t make adequate provisions for taking care of everyone. Neither does liberalism – it only pretends otherwise. Collective politics requires compulsion, which in turn requires the death of compassion for the inconvenient individual.
A noble society owed Mary Jo Kopechne a measure of undying anger over her death, and should have denied any position of high honor to the man who never repented for his part in it. A truly wise society should work forward, from the inherent rights of the individual, to fair and just laws that respect those rights. Collectivism works backward, from a desired outcome to the elaborate political theories necessary to justify it… and like any other massive vehicle being driven in reverse, it sometimes runs people down.
As they say, read the whole thing. Piling on is Matt Welch from Reason’s Hit & Run blog: “If you’re openly musing whether the unwilling, unjust sacrifice of an innocent is worth a broad set of alleged legislative improvements, you’re not asking a morally challenging question, you’re answering it.”