The Tennessean published a great story on SCHIP yesterday, exploring the health care issue through the lens of natural rights. Unpopular in today’s more postmodern political climate, natural rights refer to those things that all men and women are entitled to by virtue of simply being a person — you know, the whole “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” thing. John Locke as well as the American Founders built our system of limited government upon these principles, yet the rise of the welfare state during the so-called “Progressive” era (as if regressing back into feudal-style big government was somehow progress) threw these founding principles out the window in favor of short-term benefits that resonated with the quite populous lower classes. By the mid-1970s or so, it was clear that those short-term benefits had created disastrous long-term consequences, and the ensuing two decades were spent trying to scale down government. But with the memory of double-digit inflation, economic stagnation, and unemployment fading in our minds, all those New Deal/Great Society ideas are starting to sound pretty sweet again. Anyhow, here’s to returning to our roots:
Rights come from God, not government. This has always been a hard concept for the left to swallow. Governments are designed to protect rights, not bestow them. Rights are also free. In that, I mean there’s no cost involved in exercising your freedom of speech or assembly. We have the right to freedom of the press but we don’t have the right to have the government buy us a newspaper. We have the right to keep and bear arms but we don’t have the right to have the government provide us a weapon.
Don’t be fooled by politicians who start rattling off so-called rights that they will provide for you. If they can provide you a right, they can control it. And, I suspect that’s been the plan all along.
And to quote Louis Brandeis:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Tags: clinton, health care, hillary, politics, SCHIP, tennessee
