"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
In my life time, the meaning of the word "rights" has been confused with the Marxist conception wherein a person is somehow entitled to receive some good or service from another person. These are very different from rights. The so-called "right" to "health care" is one of these. This can't come from nature, because you don't necessarily possess it. Rather, to get "health care" you have to live in civilization and there has to be someone knowledgeable enough to provide it. That is, health care is a service. You don't have any more right to it then you would to a Rutti-Tooti Fresh and Fruity breakfast at IHOP. You can get one, but they aren't required to let you have it for nothing. You get one by making a contract with IHOP to trade it to you for some money.
Moreover, as preconditions, you have to be in an IHOP. If there's not one near you, there's no imperative someone transport you to one, nor to build one conveniently located for your dining pleasure. In other words, it is a precondition to obtain this good that you have to live in a place where someone can actually own and operate such an establishment. They must necessarily have access to electricity, water, sewer service, trash removal and food distribution. All of those goods and services have to be bought as well. None of it adheres to anyone in the chain of transactions as a fact of nature.
Likewise for "health care". A lot of people have to do and have to possess a lot of goods and knowledge to provide it. They might occasionally provide it as a charitable gift, but if they are not in general, being compensated for their efforts then there will be no health care for you to partake of.
Anyhow, in today's America, when you talk of "rights" you have to make this distinction. Too many people have grown accustomed to the phrase "I have a right to" being applied to things that, without a doubt, Jefferson not only never conceived of, but would not have agreed met the definition. The left has, predictably, developed a very self-serving terminology for the distinction. They term natural rights as "negative rights" and stuff the government is supposed to give you in its eternal benevolence "positive rights". A more accurate way to say it to call natural rights "rights" and the other kind as "not rights". Think of it this way: the eternal benevolence of government is the empty set. So if "positive rights" is the set of things you can receive from that set then it is likewise empty. Ergo, there is no such thing as a "positive right".
The easiest way to tell the difference is this: if a person has to give it to you or trade it to you or you have to take it from them (steal it in other words) then it's not a right. If you can do it without taking from anyone else and the only question is whether some force is going to act to prevent you, then it's a right.
Alright then, what does it matter? Well... let's have a look at the constitution of a failed state. One of the most notorious kleptocracies in the Western Hemisphere.
ARTICLE 22:According to Wikipedia this document is modeled on the US Constitution. Apparently the person who wrote the Wikipedia entry as well as the editors who ultimately control content never read Jefferson or Madison. Perhaps when they say "modeled after" they mean "someone took the time to write it all down in one place."
The State recognizes the right of every citizen to decent housing, education, food and social security.
ARTICLE 23:
The State has the obligation to ensure for all citizens in all territorial divisions appropriate means to ensure protection, maintenance and restoration of their health by establishing hospitals, health centers and dispensaries.
So everyone in this country has the "right" to food and health care. The place must be paradise on earth, n'est-ce pas? Mais, non désolé! Considering their geographic location, and that they've been a "free" country for nearly 200 years, there's really no reason other than a faulty political philosophy for Haiti to be as broken as it is. Their constitution, I argue is the key.
When the government is under a constitutional mandate to provide a service, it is necessarily under a constitutional mandate to confiscate the means of providing it. It's a perpetual justification for theft, and the government of Haiti indeed excels in that. Yet, does this government ever succeed at providing the mandated service? No, and it won't. It's not in the interest of those in power to succeed at that. They have a monopoly, and a mandate to steal in its name. You get what you get and they can always cry "we need a bigger budget, so we need to raise your taxes." Sound familiar?
Haiti is by no means unique in this either. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 makes a few high-minded promises as well. This was written by Stalin's administration. Yes, the same one that purposely starved the populace of its biggest food-producing subject nation. Did they create paradise? Um... no.
The founders of our nation understood that government is ultimately the use of force. Consequently the main thing you have to compel government to do is leave people alone. People are quite capable of and quite motivated to provide for themselves and others. That only breaks down when a more powerful force than the individual interferes, for example by setting up a monopoly by force of law.
The last things you want your government to be are: unrestrained or a service provider. Even when the intent is completely honorable the results are ultimately foul. Governments just aren't good at the whole "service" concept. In part it is because governments do not perceive themselves as mortal. Customer complaints don't appear to endanger the livelihoods of people in government. So they go mostly ignored, or else they serve as an excuse to rob your neighbors to serve you better.
FedEx provides superior service without having to rob from the treasury. This isn't by accident. The owners of FedEx understand that their customers could go somewhere else, and as such, they have an incentive to provide a good value and good service. If a FedEx employee ever treated you with the disregard displayed in the average post office he'd be out of a job. Only government "enterprises" can stay open without serving their customers well or courteously.
It is the nature of the beast. It is the fundamentally about incentives. The post office doesn't get budget increases by working within its budget. No government operation does that. In government you get budget increases by doing your job poorly. Private enterprise works on the opposite proposition. Do your job poorly and or inefficiently and you drive the money away.
Given the choice between a government employee and someone who gets paid more if they do their job well, who would you rather have take you to the hospital when you're bleeding to death? Seriously, if the number of people who die on the way to the hospital is an incentive for a bigger budget to a government agency, there will be a lot of bleeding to death. Whereas if people are competing for the privilege, the one whose customers don't die so often is the one you're going to hire.
Knowing that, a rational people would never transfer responsibility for any good or service to the government unless there was some compelling reason why it couldn't be done any other way.
Our founders understood this, and generations before mine did too. Now we all need to start making ourselves so well informed. We who are living today need to understand where all these ideas came from and reject the bad ones. At the same time, people wrongly described as "constitutional scholars" are trying to tell us that our constitution is incomplete because it does not address "positive rights". Make sure you understand what they mean when they say that. The life you save could be your own.
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