What is a Right, anyway?

I recently found this gem on my Facebook Timeline, posted there by a “friend” of mine.  It is called A Bill of Non Rights.  The author (Lewis Napper, a computer software engineer from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000) was tired of hearing that every damn thing is a RIGHT (he was a Libertarian, of course), and he made the point (back in 1993) that all sorts of things (food, housing, health care, a job, happiness, etc.) are not “rights,” a point with which I substantially agree.  You may have already seen it on your Facebook Timeline.  But you should read it before continuing to read this post.

So, what is a (Constitutional) Right, anyway?

First, there are the RIGHTS that Thomas Jefferson enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, those unalienable rights among which are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Americans take these “rights” for granted as we all heard these immortal words for the first time while we were still in our mothers’ wombs.  In addition, the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution declares that “We the People … in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  Maybe essential food, housing, education and health care are covered under that umbrella; maybe not.  All that we can really say about these “rights” are that they are a habit of mind, a way of thinking, that all Americans share and that citizens of other nations can only envy us for guaranteeing to ourselves.  Even if it is not that clear what they really mean.

Second, there are the very specific RIGHTS enumerated in the Bill of Rights: for example, the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of press, the right to a trial by jury, etc.  All of these so-called “rights” are instances of “government shall not have the power to compel us to do or prevent us from doing these kinds of things.”  These rights are liberties that government cannot take from us.  More recently, they have become known as “negative rights” as they are things that government is forbidden to deny us rather than things that we have a right to do.

Third, there are FDR’s Four Freedoms, as he enumerated in his State of the Union address in 1941.  They consist of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  The first two, FDR borrowed from the Bill of Rights, from the First Amendment.  The third and fourth are different: they are instances of freedom FROM something, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  Freedom from want may imply food, clothing, housing, warmth, family, community, and maybe even education and health care.  Freedom from fear is a cornucopia that each generation can define for itself: fear of war, of danger, of ill health, of failure, of joblessness, of friendlessness, etc.  And maybe these freedoms are elaborations of what the Preamble to the Constitution asserts as rights.  Some consider these “positive rights” as opposed to the negative rights listed above.

Finally, there are these RIGHTS, let’s call them Bernie Sanders’ rights, like a right to a college education and a right to health care.  Implicit in these so-called “rights” is that they are free, free to the recipient even if not free to the society that must pay for them with tax receipts.  The author noted above says they are not really “rights” because they are not free, someone has to pay for them.  You may not pay directly for your public-school education, but every tax payer does pay for it; things that are not truly “free” cannot be rights, or so our author contends.  Note that the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights cost no one anything.

But consider: there are two essentially identical roads from point A to Point B except that one road is a Toll Road while the other is a Free Road.  In truth, the so-called Free Road is not really free as it was paid for through gasoline taxes; everyone who drives pays for them, society pays for free roads, so free roads are not really free!  But to insist on the point is a bit silly, as the Free Road is “more free” than the Toll Road, and by the exact amount of the Toll.  As long as we understand that some free things are really NOT free, that someone has to pay for them – if not YOU and not NOW – then we are OK.  If this is all the author wanted to say, I think he wasted his time.  I do not believe that many Americans really believe that a free road is really free and that a free education is really free or that free health care is really free; I think we all know that someone – society, tax payers – pays for them.  And that if all roads were private Toll Roads, we would not be happy about it, even if we would stop paying the gas tax that pays for our Free Roads.

FWIW, I do NOT agree with Sanders’ supporters that health care and a college education are or ought to be considered a right, because someone (else) has to pay for them.  On the other hand, I do agree with them that your access to health care should not depend on your income or net worth, and I do believe that anyone who wants a college education (at a public university) should not be denied just because he can’t afford it (as long as he keeps up his grades).  Maybe we are just quibbling over words.

But maybe Napper's point is that many Americans really DO think that a free education and free health care are really free, that no one pays for them; maybe he believes that Bernie Sanders’ supporters really do believe that these things are really free, that no one pays for them, that they are a right in the original sense (I sincerely hope no one actually thinks this, but humans are not as rational as Libertarians would like).  In good Libertarian fashion, he makes the point that things that are not free cannot be rights.  I believe that he is wrong.  Things evolve; words and their definitions evolve.  What is considered free has evolved, what is considered a right has evolved.  What you claim is a right depends on which definition is clear to you.  But someone else who thinks differently from you is not necessarily wrong; you are both entitled to choose which definition suits you.  As long as we are clear that is what you are doing, choosing one specific definition of what a right really is.  And as long as your audience knows what you are talking about.  I think that Sanders’ supporters want to make sure that poverty does not prevent you from having access to decent health care and to a higher education.

My Commentary on Napper’s A Bill of Non Rights

Have a copy of Napper’s text open in another tab of your web browser so you can see what I am referencing.

• Article I: "You do not have the right to a new car, big screen color TV or any other form of wealth."  If a Welfare check allows the recipient to afford, in addition to the basics of life, a TV or an iPhone bill, the Welfare check is too large.  So, agreed. 
• Article II: "You do not have the right to never be offended."  Agreed. 
• Article III: "You do not have the right to be free from harm."  Agreed.
• Article IV: "You do not have the right to free food and housing."  The assumption here that anyone who does not have paying work chooses welfare over paying work is counter-factual.  And probably bigoted.  Does the author really believe this, that all or most welfare recipients are just lazy bums who are gaming the system?  Perhaps we do need a “Universal Basic Income,” as more and more jobs are being permanently replaced by machines.  And as low-skill jobs are being replaced more quickly, maybe we should educate low-skill workers to the next level, but low-skill workers are the hardest to educate.  The problem will not be solved by snatching life support away from these people.  Libertarians are pretty self-righteous about everyone having absolute control over their own lives. 
• Article V: "You do not have the right to free health care."  Agreed.  However, “from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.”  Huh?  This is a non-sequitur.  And just a bit holier than thou.  It is the stupidest argument(?) against universal health care I have ever seen. 
• Article VI: "You do not have the right to physically harm other people."  Agreed. 
• Article VII: "You do not have the right to the possessions of others."  Agreed. 
• Article VIII: "You don’t have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience."  Agreed.
• Article IX: "You don’t have the right to a job."  The argument (2nd sentence) is sound, but the conclusion (1st sentence) is out of touch.  Sure, no one has a right to a job, but jobs are disappearing as we speak and it ain’t the fault of this guy’s imagined couch potatoes.  We do have lots of jobs for computer programmers, but most humans do not have the kind of logical minds needed for this kind of work and computer programmers are at the forefront of eliminating jobs in virtually all other fields. 
• Article X: "You do not have the right to happiness."  The conclusion (1st sentence), agreed.  The argument (2nd sentence) betrays once again the author’s tough Libertarian attitude.

The Other Version

But I was not inspired to write this piece just to register my agreements and disagreements with one guy’s pretty standard Libertarian view-points.  If you go looking for A Bill of Non Rights on the web, more often than not you will find a bowdlerized version of the original (most often (mis-)attributed to a state representative from Georgia named Mitchell Kaye; the real culprit is that most prolific of all authors, Mr. Anonymous).  This version omits Article VIII on war and adds two more articles, X and XI, on English and our national religious heritage.  Check it out here.  My comments.

• Article X: "This is an English speaking country."  With the anonymous author, I too believe that English should be the official language of the United States, but we will need one or two generations to phase it in.  And it need not alter anyone’s behavior; all it needs to do is declare that all documents, signs, posters, manuals, etc. written by government will be published in English; and all public school classes will be conducted in English, except for TOEFL and foreign language classes; what language you speak with family and friends need not change.  But I would not have been so damned smug and superior about it as the author was; obviously, the man has issues.  And what has this article to do with rights, anyway?
• Article XI; "You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage.  This country was founded on the belief in one true God. ...  The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!!!!"  "One true God"?  Hmmm, really?  Neither the Declaration of Independence (“nature’s God” is not what today’s American Christians mean by the word “God”) nor the Constitution mention “God” in their texts.  Every other national constitution in the world invokes God’s blessings, just not ours.  Does the author think that our Founding Fathers forgot?  Granted, nearly all our Founding Fathers were (Protestant) Christians.  But if they were alive today, they would be Unitarian Universalists who rarely attend religious services and don’t pray much; in their own day, they were called deists (God exists, but He created the universe and then left it to us to meddle through alone).  “One true God,” indeed.  The author betrays his ignorance of Revolutionary American history here.  And “In God We Trust” became our motto in 1956, only 60+ years ago (to distinguish us from Godless Communism); “E Pluribus Unum” was our motto from 1782 until then; hardly our heritage.  I am as religious as the next guy, but our Founding Fathers left us with a “secular” nation, not because they did not believe in God but because they knew very well that the history of Christian Europe was a history of religious wars, and they wanted to avoid repeating that unhappy history.  And what has this article to do with rights, anyway?

Coda

In the end, I have often argued with friends that all these things are not really rights, surely not in the original (negative rights) sense, just as the author of A Bill of Non Rights asserts, because they are not really free, because our tax dollars pay for them, and paying taxes upsets so many of us.  But I have also come to accept a more liberal way to see a “right” (as a possible – not the only – way to see it), as something that society ought to provide to everybody, even though it must cost tax dollars.  For how many of us really believe that only those who can afford it should have the “right” to an education?  How many of us really believe that only those who can afford it should have the “right” to health care when we need it?  So, are these rights really rights?  Maybe not, probably not.  But who cares, as long as we know what we are talking about.  And maybe we should relax a little instead of getting all bent out of shape as to what is or is not a RIGHT.  And if you don’t like taking liberties with the word “right,” what would you call it? 

Addendum: Saturday, 04/13/2019
This fellow, John Wright, beat me by 11 years!  No plagiarism on my part, just slow to find the Libertarian rant and (especially) its corruption.  Great minds think alike.