Mar 17 Tyranny Built With Rights

On his television program Monday night, Glenn Beck highlighted the subjugation of “faith, hope, and charity” by the Left to gain support for contrived rights like universal healthcare. Sob stories are utilized to leverage proper emotional response toward improper governmental action. Underlying this theater is the fundamental principle articulated in the Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” At work in our society today is a wholly contradictory position, articulated last December by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, and revisted Monday by Beck.

What [the healthcare] bill does is… We take that step from healthcare as a privilege to healthcare as an alienable right of every single American citizen. As I have said before, this bill is not complete. I’ve used the analogy of a starter home in which we can add additions and enhancements as we go into the future. But, like every other right that we’ve ever passed the American people, we revisit it later to enhance and build on those rights… (emphasis added)

This statement is antithetical to the Declaration of Independence. Rather than endowment by their Creator, Harkin believes all men are granted rights from government, that rights are “enhanced” by government.

Without speaking to the senator’s particular motivation, let us consider how “passing a right to the people” might be a malicious act. To do so, we must first consider the purpose of government in a constitutional republic. That purpose is to protect individual rights. In order to fulfill that role, government is passed from the people the power to utilize force to uphold the Law. If you were of a mind to fashion a dictatorship, and wanted to do so utilizing the mechanisms available in a constitutional republic, your methodology would have to fit its nature. Since the only rightful use of force is to uphold the law, and since the only just law is that which protects inalienable rights, the best way to increase power would be to discover more “rights” to “protect.”

The truly insidious aspect of this approach to tyranny-building is its implicit cloaking device. Rather than argue for power directly, this strategy enables one to argue on behalf of the downtrodden, those whose newfound rights have been hitherto neglected. In the case of healthcare, President Obama and company seek to rectify an oversight nearly two and a half centuries old. Since the Founding, our right to healthcare as gone unrecognized. Nevermind the possibility it was simply not there!

We must know what our rights actually are, their nature, and why we have them. Just as importantly, we must know what rights are not. The unbridled embrace of contrived rights serves only to justify the unbridled consolidation of power.

Cross-posted at Fightin Words, where comments are welcome.