Let us for a moment adopt the proposition that health care is in fact a "right," as pretty much every liberal politician has told us for at least a generation. . .
Now, imagine if the government had a body of experts charged with figuring out what your free-speech rights are, or your right to assemble, or worship. Mr. Jones, you can say X and Y, but not Z. Ms. Smith, you can freely assemble with Aleutians, Freemasons, and carpenters, but you may not meet in public with anyone from Cleveland or of Albanian descent. Mrs. Wilson, you may pray to Vishnu and Crom, but never to Allah or Buddha, and when you do pray, you cannot do so for longer than 20 minutes at a time, unless it is one of several designated holidays. Please see Extended Prayer Form 10-22B.
Of course, all of this would be ludicrous beyond words.
Which is the whole point. Health care cannot be a right, because rights cannot come from government. At best, they can be protected by government.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
QOTD
Jonah Goldberg on National Review:
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8 comments:
Ok...so health care's a right. The very basis of health is food. Therefore, the government is responsible for supplying me with food.
Right??
suek:
Exactly.
Alas, another example of fallacious thinking. In this quote, both "straw man" and "equivocation." A straw man argument involves picking the weakest or most emotionally negative form of an opponent's argument or position and attacking it. Here it is used to claim that liberals believe health care is a "right," which is a misrepresentation.
Mr. Goldberg then uses the term "right" with a different meaning when he launches into his bureaucrat slamming. Pure equivocation.
But his last point exposes the equivocation. It is certainly true that government "bureaucrats" do not create rights, but only protect them to the extent they exist, if at all. In doing so, they must verify their existence under the laws they oversee, determine their scope, and develop policies and regulations to protect any they find.
Perhaps Mr. Goldberg should instead examine and challenge the actual motives of persons trying to reform health care . . . or his own in trying to undermine such efforts.
-Cogito
> Here it is used to claim that liberals believe health care is a "right," which is a misrepresentation.
Oh, yasss, by allll means: Defend THAT insanely ridiculous claim.
Libtards toss around the word "right" as thought it came from pez dispensers, and they got a commission for every one used.
There are a vast array of "rights" which have been found in the last 50 years of liberal sway over education, the media, and Hollywood.
And all of them have utterly nothing to do with the term as-used in the Constitution.
> examine and challenge the actual motives of persons trying to reform health care
And herein lies one of the more common argumentative fallacies of libtards -- the notion that "motives" matter all that much.
I personally don't give a rat's ass if my grocer, my doctor, my bookie serve me "altrustically", or because they're making a profit.
Their motives don't mean squat.
All that matters is that they do it well at a price I consider fair and reasonable (affordability is a different matter). And if they do not do it for that price, then it matters that I am free to take my business elsewhere... Not to demand that they alter their prices to suit me.
"Motives" don't mean jack shit.
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations"
- Thomas Jefferson -
Considering that you apparently don't grasp any of the above, I think you clearly left out the first part of your name:
--"Nil" Cogito
Also, related:
"What you ... seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving up his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations. As to religions; I recommend a reading of Thomas Aquinas. ... Men must want to do things out of their innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.
If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness -- they cannot work and their civilization collapses."
- Frank Herbert, 'Children of Dune' -
Hey...look at raising children.
Do everything for them in order to set a good example for how they should live their lives and chances are they'll expect you to supply them with the good life as long as they live.
Require them to earn their livelihood even in childhood, and they'll acquire a sense of self-worth and the ability to go out into the world of adults and provide for themselves.
> Require them to earn their livelihood even in childhood, and they'll acquire a sense of self-worth and the ability to go out into the world of adults and provide for themselves.
Oh, my. We can't have that. No, that is completely unacceptable.
Cogito, much of what you say would follow nicely from your original claim. Unfortunately, I have heard many people tell me live - including my brother across the room at the moment - that health care is a right. Perhaps because I work as a social worker in a hospital, I am exposed to an unusual concentration of them. But I hear it all the time. It may be that all liberals do not believe that, but many do.
I am also a bit uncertain about the "motives" argument. My Emote-O-Meter is on the fritz at present. The attributions of motive that people make about their political opponents is an unsafe game to play from any side. I do know that not all people who desire guaranteed health care do so from pure, or even remotely pure motive; similarly, I know many who believe, rightly or wrongly, that the current proposals will worsen American health. You malign them unfairly.
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