On the Future of This Blog

For some weeks now I have been planning on shuttering Monstrus Dei. I haven't been writing much in it except for the Quotes of the Day, I'm really not that satisfied with it, and recently I've been engaged in planning something much more ambitious and much more fun.

Upon reflection, however, I've decided to keep it going, at least to some extent, but with a narrowed focus. Rather than being a 'politics and religion' blog, I'm pretty much just going to make it about politics and social issues, since the new blog I alluded to above will be almost entirely devoted to religious topics. That means that, in short, this will no longer be my 'main' blog as it has been in the past, but merely one that I can occasionally share my thoughts on issues that don't belong anywhere else.

Not sure when the new blog will be up (or even whether I'm going to set it up on Blogger at all), but I'll post a link when it's ready. I'm really looking forward to it; it should be a lot of fun.

Quote of the Day #44

The pupil dilates in the night, and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it.

-Les Miserables

Why Healthcare is Not a Right

                One of the ways in which we are dismantling the great nation our fathers bequeathed to us is by abusing the idea of ‘Rights.’ The concept of natural rights, which every person possesses simply by the fact that he exists, is the foundational principle of the American experiment; it is America’s raison d’etre. The Declaration of Independence spelled out the concept very clearly in its second paragraph:

                “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are established among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

                These three rights – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness – are the basis for every other amendment, law, and practice outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Like the Ten Commandments, they are the universal propositions form which we extract the particular ‘dos and don’ts’ of life.

                Now, America exists to ensure that her citizens can exercise these inborn rights. That is the one and only reason for the American government. Everything the government does or can do – levy taxes, provide the military, enact laws, regulate inter-state commerce, etc. – it does for no other reason than to ensure that its citizens can enjoy the natural rights with which they were created. The government is supposed to be a kind of referee; it stays out of the game until someone cheats, then it steps in to reassert the rules of the game before backing out and allowing play to resume.

                The question emerges, however; if America exists to ensure the rights of its citizens, what are those rights? There are the three listed above, but are those the only rights? The Declaration implies no. So what other rights are there? How do we define natural rights?

                The answer, as usual, is found in that same paragraph in the Declaration. The natural, unalienable rights which governments exist to ensure are the rights endowed to all men by their Creator by virtue of their creation (the clause “All men are created equal” places the endowment of their rights at the first moment of their existence). What does this mean? Well, this can only mean that natural rights come ‘pre-packaged,’ so to speak, with every human being. Just like every man comes into this life with DNA, a heart, a brain, and so forth, he enters life with a set of rights; of things he has been given approval by God to have or to do. He has the right to life because God made him a living being. He has the right to liberty because God gave him a free will. He has the right to the pursuit of happiness because God put the desire for Himself into the man’s heart. As these are given by God, no man has the right to take them away from any other (due process of law not withstanding).  

                But do you notice the key factor in all of these rights? It is precisely that no one but God can give them to anyone; you can’t give someone life, or free will, or the urge to be happy (parents can have sex, but they can’t control whether or not they conceive), you can only take them away. By denying someone the right to life, what we mean is that we kill them. By denying someone the right to liberty or the pursuit of happiness, what we mean is that we impose artificial consequences to certain actions. For instance, no one gives a man the ability to speak his mind; all they can do is to punish him for doing so.

                So a natural right is one that is inborn and that can’t be given but only taken away. What, then, of those rights we so often hear about these days? Particularly, what about the ‘right’ to education or to healthcare?

                The short answer is that there is no such thing. No one has a natural, unalienable right to be educated, and no one has a natural, unalienable right to a doctor. Why not? Because no one is obligated to become a teacher or a doctor if they choose not to.  

You see, a right is not a right, properly speaking, if someone else has to provide it. No one gives you liberty; you simply possess it by virtue of being human. No one has to give you life once you’re conceived; if you’re alive, you’re alive, and if you aren’t, you aren’t, but no one has to consciously go to work every day to keep you alive or to keep giving you free will. In terms of healthcare, however, it only exists if ordinary human beings dutifully go in to work every day and do their jobs. If every doctor, nurse, and physician in America suddenly quit or went on strike, American healthcare would cease to exist. But if every other human being on Earth vanished tomorrow, you would still be alive, free, and able to seek happiness.

                Basically, what distinguishes a true, natural right is whether it needs to be actively removed or whether it can be taken away by simple non-action on the part of someone else.

                So, healthcare and education are not, strictly speaking, rights. Does this mean that anyone can be turned away from schools or hospitals for any reason? No. These things are not rights, but they are duties. No one is obligated to provide them, but once they are provided the very nature of the service dictates that they be made available. The fact that someone becomes a doctor or a teacher means that they consciously took on a certain responsibility, which they have a duty to fulfill for as long as they are in that profession. It is this responsibility, freely taken on by the individual, which provides the expectation of service for any who seek it.

                In other words, when a man decides to become a doctor he takes on the duty to serve a suffering humanity. He himself takes this upon himself and accepts the burden and responsibility that it imposes, just as a soldier takes upon himself the duty to obey orders and, if necessary, to lay down his life. In short, it’s what he signed up for.

                The reasonable expectation of healthcare, an education, and so forth comes from the very fact that someone has decided to undertake this service and is therefore bound by his own commitment to do so. But they are not rights because no one has the right to coerce anyone into taking on these responsibilities, anymore than they have the right to coerce anyone into marriage or the priesthood.   
            Thus, there are two kinds of ‘rights:’ the natural, unalienable rights which are given by God to every man and which the American government exists to ensure, and the ‘duty’ rights which are provided by the free choices of individuals and which the government does not have the power to provide or to deny. The first kind of right is inherent in all human beings; it is internal, unalienable (it cannot be artificially separated from the person by any accident of time, place, or situation), and ‘self-centered:’ that is, revolving around the individuals own choices and actions. The second kind only exists because another person freely chose to take on the responsibility of providing it. It is external, conditional, and ‘other-centered:’ revolving around how an individual reacts to and works with others people (i.e. the physician doesn’t enter medicine to heal himself, but other people).  

                Only the first type is ensured by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the second is not. The existence of the second is completely outside the scope of the powers of the American government. If nobody chooses to undertake the duty to provide healthcare, the government cannot force them too, since the government only exists to secure the natural rights, which include the ability to choose one’s own career in life. If the government takes it upon itself to ensure the second type of rights, it will necessarily be infringing on the first type, thus negating its own existence since the documents it is founded upon clearly state that once a government becomes hostile to man’s natural rights that government ceases to be valid. Thus, the American government cannot ensure the ‘right’ to healthcare or education or any other service without invalidating itself in the process.

P.S. Some might raise the question; does the formula of “if it is being provided by someone else it is not a right” mean that abortion should be legal, since the mother is providing the means for the child’s continued life within her? Of course not. A mother is not consciously providing the child in her womb with life, it is happening apart from her will and, at times, without her knowledge. She cannot simply decide to stop giving it life; she can only decide to actively destroy it.

                But then, some might say, on that principle once the child is born she can passively remove its right to life simply by not feeding it. Well, no, since she is actively choosing to deny the child food in an attempt to kill it, just like a prison warden could murder one of his prisoners by simply denying him food (as often happened during the Holocaust). In both cases it would be a conscious, willful decision to end someone’s life by artificially denying them the means to survive.

 A man who simply chooses not to become a doctor is not actively denying someone healthcare; he’s under no obligation to provide it and he isn’t consciously preventing anyone from receiving it if it exists. If everyone simply chose not to become a doctor, healthcare would cease to exist but it wouldn’t have been actively denied to anyone; there simply wouldn’t be any healthcare to receive. A mother who denies her child food, however, must necessarily know and desire that this will kill the child and so would be actively working to deprive the child of its right to life.  

Remember: a true right can only be actively and consciously removed; it does not have to be actively provided.

P.P.S. I would also like to point out that rights are not the same things as virtues; just because someone does not have the unalienable, in-born right to something does not mean that they don’t deserve it, or that one should not provide it for them if one can. It just means that a government founded to secure unalienable rights is not obligated – or permitted – to provide it.

Quote of the Day #43

Chancellor: “There is no God. The State has proven that there is no God.”

Wordsworth: “You cannot erase God with an edict!”

-The Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man

Quote of the Day #42

And lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me. For which thing, thrice I besought the Lord that it might depart from me. And he said to me: My Grace is sufficient for you: for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful.
-2 Corinthians 12: 7-10

Quote of the Day #41

“All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired”

-G.K. Chesterton

Quote of the Day #40

"Even a man who is pure of heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the Autumn moon is bright."
-Sir John Talbot, The Wolf Man