Sunday, September 27, 2009
Watching the news this morning I saw a clip of Michael Moore’s latest documentary and after my initial automatic gag reflex it dawned on me - what exactly is a “right” and what do people interpret them to be? Well, as identified in the U.S. Constitution it is a philosophical concept where a ruler or ruling class would be prevented from taking away certain “rights”, from it’s subjects, which inhere to their person as part of being human. This concept is also known as inalienable rights and tend to include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
However, it appears that this definition is currently being ubiquitously challenged. From education to health care, the concept of a right has shifted from that of the preservation of individual action to that of a politically motivated, and aggressively redistributive collective entitlement.
What this ultimately means is that a right ,in its traditional philosophical sense, is the "right" to be able to attempt to accomplish or pursue certain activities. The right to work , purchase and own property, move, breathe, walk etc… These are in fact rights. On the other hand, the challenging definition does not regard actions as part of the interpretation because it is not interested in what the government or ruling class should be able to tell you what one should be prohibited or not from doing, but rather, it regards the final results of actions i.e. product as the right in question.
Under the cloak of political, social, and economic justice - many individuals and virtually all the media and politicians in a juxtaposition of facts champion the notion that education, health care, shelter, food, standard of living, so on and so forth are tangible “rights” rather than the actual pursuit of these interests. What’s worse is that these rights as most things are not actually free, come at the expense of those individuals who by having chosen to act on these rights have actually EARNED the results.
The danger of this regardless of any ones political allegiance is simple. Currently the average person pays approximately 50% of what they make in taxes to be redistributed AS the government SEEs FIT, this estimate is based on adding together state, local, federal, property, payroll, sales, sin, estate taxes, etc… This effectively means that ½ of everything most people will ever make is property of the government. Further Section 61 of IRC code identifies gross income in short as EVERYTHING, unless it specifically excludes it (by the way, bartering is also taxable).
If the pattern of increased taxation continues and entitlements or “rights” continue to be disbursed on a mass scale, the government then no longer works for us but rather we would work for them and if you look closely that is also the definition of slavery. I myself would prefer the option of indentured servitude, first there was an agreement as to the conditions beforehand and also at somepoint you actually get to go free -typically 7 years or so.