Quote of the Day: Why Health Care Is Not a Right

The problem with his statement is that rights aren't the government's to give. John Locke, the 17th century English philosopher, wrote about inalienable rights: God-given rights that can't be taken away. (Agnostics and atheists may prefer to think of these rights as inherent in nature.) Locke considered life, liberty and property to be among such natural rights.

A century later, Thomas Jefferson adopted Locke's definition when he drafted the U.S. Declaration of Independence, citing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as inalienable rights. Government's role is "to secure these Rights," Jefferson wrote, not to create new ones.

The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, enumerates some of these natural rights: freedom of speech and religion; a free press and free assembly; and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Even more important, the Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from enacting any law interfering with the exercise of these freedoms. (I'll leave the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's right to bear arms to Constitutional scholars.)

That hasn't stopped Progressives from creating all kinds of new rights: a right to a job, a right to a minimum wage, a right to health care.

These aren't rights as conceived by the Founding Fathers. A right is something we can all exercise simultaneously without imposing a burden on someone else. The only obligation, in fact, is that others not interfere with an individual's exercise of his rights.

That concise concept of rights, sometimes referred to as negative rights, comes from the book, Clichés of Politics, a collection of essays published by the Foundation for Economic Education. It provides a simple basis for determining what constitutes a right.

Many politicians insist on transforming every privilege or benefit or entitlement into a right.

(bold added) 

This excerpt is from an article by mainstream commentator, former Bloomberg analyst, Caroline Baum at EC21.org on first presidential debate of the Democratic Party