Just before where they wrote the part where it is stated that a person has an inalienable right to anything which others provide, and makes the person happy.
I guess "living constitution" now means "living up to the expectations that validates [insert your favorite political philosophy here]". Well, it's always been like that but at least we all agreed on what was printed on the paper...
Yeah, that is the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That's life and liberty. I'm sure pursuit of happiness is distributed amongst the other amendments, possibly it is entirely enshrined by the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." (that's a joke).
It might even be argued that the Constitution was required to encompass that which is in the Declaration. It was the Declaration that formed a new country, the Constitution merely outlines the governmental system of that country. It's not an argument I'd accept, but I don't find it entirely baseless.
Njorl: The real joke is pretending that the Tenth Amendment continues to mean anything:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.
Personally, I think they a typesetter accidentally left that one out while composing the Times version of the Consitution, and an editor filled the blank space with "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" figuring someone would fact-check it and correct it later. When you think about it, it makes their editorial positions quite understandable ;-)
So the editorial writers and editors made a mistake. Does it in any way detract from the substantive point made by the editorial? Or is this just another invitation from the libertarians to commit genocide on a nation of straw men, as Will Allen has begun?
Szr: The mistake caters to the common limited government complaint (now commonly used by libertarians) that proponents of government activity do not understand the Constitution, and thus the role of government.
I agree with the legislation, but mixing up the Declaration and Constitution is cringe-worthy coming from the Editors of a respected paper (or taunt worthy, if one happens to dislike that paper).
Au contraire, szr. I was informed last week in this forum, by people who did not call themselves "strawmen", but rather, "liberals", that they had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, to be performed by their fellow citizens, called "health care", because absent their being the beneficiaries of that human labor, they could not pursue happiness.
Well, okay, but anybody arguing that people have a right to own firearms with which to shoot themselves in the head is just asking to be turned into an Onion article.
My guess is that the previous commentators were referring to something else in the Constitution about "promot(ing) the general welfare". I don't see how understanding this to allow Federal support for particular public policies that promote the general welfare like, say, heath care, is a tortured reading of the Constitution.
Well, szr, as I tried to expain those "liberals", it is a far different thing to say that the majority, via their elected representatives, has decided to promote the general welfare via the common provision of health care (although any honest reading of the Constitution would conclude that the Amendment process would need be employed, I think), and saying that any citizen has an "inalienable right" to the labor known as "health care", to be provided by another citizen. These "liberals" were unable to appreciate the nuance, unfortunately.
I was informed last week in this forum, by people who did not call themselves "strawmen", but rather, "liberals", that they had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, to be performed by their fellow citizens, called "health care", because absent their being the beneficiaries of that human labor, they could not pursue happiness.
No, Will Allen, people who don't receive health care don't merely have their pursuit of happiness thwarted, they die. As in, the opposite of life. Get your straw men in a nice, orderly row before proceeding any further.
And Internet Ronin, there's this thing called the Fourteenth Amendment that circumscribes the Tenth. You might want to read it sometime.
La Follette, there were people who lived into their nineties before the advent of modern health care, and all people die, regardless of health care received. That doesn't give you an "inalienable right" to that which can only be obtained by your fellow citizens' labor.
In any case, these "liberals" said to me that they could not pursue happiness without health care, thus they had an "inalienable right" to that form of human labor. Such is modern "liberalism", I guess.
Will, that argument makes no sense. A commentator on a post on a blog days ago provides you with all the evidence you need in order to understand and dismiss modern liberalism? If your standards are that low, I'll do you one better!
Patrick Michaels of the Cato institute is completely incoherent on issues of climate change. For instance, he claims there's lots of controversy about climate change. Except their isn't. A 2004 review of all peer reviewed science articles on climate change found not a single one which challenged the consensus. Ergo, Patrick Michaels is provably wrong and a silly person. But such is modern "libertarianism" I guess.
At least my version of the genetic falacy relies on an actual libertarian fellow at a libertarian institution, and not some random blog post.
LaFollette, I thought it was obvious my comment was a joke. I'm sorry you misunderstood my intent. I certainly do appreciate that greater minds than mine have struggled, decade after decade, with the meaning, and appropriate application of, various amendments, including the tenth and the fourteenth. That said, I thought it humorous that a newspaper like the Times, which, IIRC, has on more than one occasion lamented the ignorance of the American public when it comes to civic affairs and the actual content of treasured public documents, printed such an error. That's all I meant by my comment. Sounds like you interpreted a lot more than was there. Perhaps you were thinking of someone else's comment.
Hey, szr, I didn't call them "liberals"; that's what they labeled themselves. I just thought there was a lot of irony in someone calling himself a "liberal" while claiming an "inalienable right" to the labor of other human beings, and I'll gladly concede that not all people who label themsleves "liberals" hold to such positions.
I have no position on Patrick Michaels, but I'll say that if he calls himself a "libertarian" while advocating that those who differ with him on climate change be sanctioned by the state, it would be similarly ironic.
In any case, I really try to avoid the use of labels like "conservative", "neoconservative", "liberal", "progressive", "libertarian", and the like these days, because people have such wildly different notions of what those labels entail.
No, Will Allen, people who don't receive health care don't merely have their pursuit of happiness thwarted, they die.
LaFollete - This seems logical on its face, but may be an overgeneralization. Diagnostics, hygiene, diet and lifestyle significantly improve lifespan. So does good emergency care. There's very little evidence, though, that the amount spent on chronic healthcare treatments for a society significantly affects average lifespan for a society. There are exceptions to this, but few. People are better off spending their money on food and exercise than being forced to shell out for expensive end-of-life treatments against their will.
The change was added at the same time that the First Amendment was changed to permit control of political speech and the Fifth Amendment was changed to permit the "taking" of private property from one person for the benefit of another person.
These changes, like others before them, were based on emanations and penumbras, felt in the presence of other constitutions or current political consensus.
This is all just part of the continuing refinement of the inconvenient and time consuming amendment process described by the framers.
Ed, didn't you hear? The Amendment process was just inserted when the boys were trying to cut a little bit of the Philly heat that summer with a few pulls, and they wanted to look like they were still working, instead of tying one on after lunch one Friday afternoon. They actually didn't intend for anybody to go through all that bother and fuss!
Actually, writing the whole document was kinda' just a time filler for when the fellas couldn't get good tee times that summer. They really just meant to say that Congress can do anything it wants which it deems will promote the general welfare. They just enumerated a bunch of stuff on the days when couldn't get to smackin' the Titlelist before 3 P.M..
And you call yourself a Libertarian? So when did the 14th amendment get repealed?
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Everyone knows that pursuit of happiness derives from "property" as John Locke used the term.
The phrase is based on the writings of John Locke, who expressed a similar concept of "life, liberty, and estate (or property)". While Locke said that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions", Adam Smith coined the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". The expression "pursuit of happiness" was coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his 1759 novel Rasselas.
My guess is that the previous commentators were referring to something else in the Constitution about "promot(ing) the general welfare". I don't see how understanding this to allow Federal support for particular public policies that promote the general welfare like, say, heath care, is a tortured reading of the Constitution.
You're totally serious, aren't you?
You gotta hand it to liberals. They get Orwell-- in a way that few do.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.
It's a good line, if not as poetic as the D of I. And if you're not too involved in slamming the NYT, you can make the case that the Constitution's immediate purpose was to codify the right to life liberty & POH stated in the D of I, since the preamble above seems to be pretty congruent with it.
Unless you really want to be a dick about it.
Will Allen - I didn't see the thread you're referring to. If someone actually made the claim you describe, he or she is (how do I say this nicely?) probably not the sharpest tool in the liberal shed.
I do not believe that the Constitution provides a "Right to Life" that entails a right to free health care. Rather, it makes pragmatic sense for the government to be the health care guarantor of last resort in an era of spiraling health care costs and cutthroat insurance company practices. It's a matter of regulating commerce and providing for the public welfare. Reasonable people may disagree.
I'm simply pointing out that health care often involves matters of life and death, not merely matters of "pursuing happiness." Much of the structural inefficiency in our health care system stems from the fact that people die without emergency care, therefore hospitals provide emergency care to the uninsured, and therefore the costs are passed along to people who don't abuse the system. The libertarian argument that "they don't have the right to demand that I pay for their health care" is silly, because you're already paying for their health care.
And I must say that any argument against universal health care that is based on the logical premise that "some people lived to be 90 before modern health care" is even duller than the straw-liberal you're whacking away at.
Ryan W-- I don't necessarily disagree. See above. Interestingly enough, nearly every country with universal health care pays less for end-of-life care than we do. Presumably this is because nobody likes to pay more taxes than necessary. So why are Americans willing to pay such high insurance premiums... which are deducted from our paychecks by private companies?
Internet Ronin-- That was just intended as a snide comment, like yours was.
LaFollette, again, I am making no argument for or against universal health care, per se. I don't feel like writing a few thousand words on the topic right now. My original post in this thread, and comments after it, merely pertain to what I encountered in this forum last week, which was the position that people had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, either because it was necessary for their life, or for them to pursue happiness. This merely struck me as an extremely odd exercise in interpreting the Constitution or Declaration of Independence, to say nothing of moral reasoning in general.
I agree that it's a poor understanding of our nation's founding documents to conclude that we have an "inalienable right" to health care. But do we, as Americans, have the right to certain health care services? Absolutely. If American citizens have no right whatsoever to labor provided by designated people (EMT workers, emergency room staff), and paid for by society at large, then this would entail a health care system in which people are routinely left bleeding in the streets.
It may not be an inalienable right enshrined in the Constitution. But there IS this thing called the Ninth Amendment. And, in practice, all Americans currently have the right, established by legislation, to receive certain types of labor provided by licensed health professionals without regard to their ability to pay. The relevant questions are how should we pay for these services and where do we draw the line?
I understand that you were just highlighting a weak argument. I'm just pointing out that this particular weak argument is a poorly phrased version of a much stronger argument.
What's odd to me is the concept that the individual who benefits from society owes nothing in return, and that the individual who contributes to society should expect nothing in return. Denying the existence or morality of "social compacts" is odd. Engaging in sophistry by equating single-payer healthcare with slavery is odd (every profession is slavery, using that bizarre construction). Being interminably and purposely obtuse is odd.
Let me try again. I believe that health care should be viewed as a right, not a privilege. My belief is (in my opinion) supported by the Declaration of Independence's statement that life and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights, the securing of which is the reason governments are instituted among men. The Constitution is our declaration of what the form of our particular government shall be, in order to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, which I assume includes securing those inalienable rights (by definition, otherwise why institute a government at all). Since I view health care as vital to life and the pursuit of happiness, I expect our government to make sure I have it. Not just "access" to it, that I actually have the thing itself. To the extent that this does not happen, our government has failed in its responsibilities; it has not delivered on securing my inalienable rights, which is why I consented to be governed by it.
I don't care how health care gets delivered to me, as long as it is always there when I need it. As it happens, I think we've seen enough evidence that leaving it generally up to the private sector doesn't do that. We also have many examples of health care being paid for by the government resulting in far better overall service at less cost. I think it's time we gave that a try.
You seem overly concerned that doctors not be prevented from charging whatever the market will bear for their services. I am saying that health care should not be seen as a way to get rich, but as a profession to provide a service. Making sure everyone receives that service is, I think, a worthy goal; and for a government founded on liberal principles, a duty.
Megan is concerned that wealth not be transferred from the young and healthy to the old and sick. Her purely economic analysis, bereft of any consideration for the societal imperative to care for the sick or any other moral consideration, is another one I reject utterly. Her analysis would result in the abolition of health care in toto, as there would be insufficient financing available to care for the old and sick, and the young and healthy would not need it and would not be helping pay for it. That's a non-starter with me.
I agree that it's a poor understanding of our nation's founding documents to conclude that we have an "inalienable right" to health care.
They DO say that governments are instituted among men to secure the inalienable rights of life and the pursuit of happiness, don't they? I contend that being healthy is indivisible from being alive and pursuing happiness. Do you disagree?
Well, LaFollette, I did try to explain to those folks that rights to goods and services, obtained via common provision, and established by legislation, is a far different thing from saying that one has an "inalienable right" to a good or service, but it was not a nuance they wished to examine.
liberalrob, the threads would improve if you would actually respond to what people wrote, instead of what you merely imagined they wrote. I never equated single payer health care with slavery. You just created that equation in your mind. I stated that to have an inalienable right to another citizen's labor is to make that citizen your slave. The two statements aren't even close to being the same.
You have the right to have you garbage picked up, because your municipality's elected leaders, to ensure the orderly protection of public health, have decided to provide common provision of garbage collectione. That doesn't mean you have an inalienable right to garbage collection.
I am curious about something. What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a family of strangers for whom to cover health insurance costs. How would you feel?
liberalrob is an advocate of slavery, and that isn't hyperbole. He actually thinks that he has an inalienable right to the labor of people who provide health care to him. Alas, this is what the term "liberal" has come to.
Posted by Will Allen | August 24, 2007 1:48 PM
That post of yours came in the context of my advocacy of single-payer health care. That was your first post to me in that thread. So much for "I never equated single payer health care with slavery." Go back and read what *I* said, why don't you. If you jump in the middle of a thread, you're supposed to be aware of all that has come before.
I stated that to have an inalienable right to another citizen's labor is to make that citizen your slave.
I think you're wrong. I think it means you have agreed to be part of a group, and a condition of being in that group is that you contribute to the group. In return, the group will give you some benefits of being a member of the group. If you want to call that "slavery" all I can say is I think you have a strange conception of slavery.
Again liberalrob, please read what was written.
I never said they were incompatible. I said they were not identical.
Well, I don't understand your point in making that statement then. If you have an inalienable right to a service, I think it is incumbent on government to see that it is provided. I don't see any way around that. HOW government assures that is open to debate, but the DUTY to provide it is not, in my opinion. You're either arguing that there is no such right, or you're arguing that government has no duty to secure such rights. Either way I disagree.
What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a family of strangers for whom to cover health insurance costs. How would you feel?
Posted by Yancey Ward | August 31, 2007 4:01 PM
Yancey, is that a realistic possibility? Come on.
The whole point of having a society is to spread out responsibility for service provision across all of society, so no one person has to shoulder impossible burdens. What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a squad of soldiers to equip for service in Iraq? It's not a fair question.
My answer to your question is that I would feel like a slave.
However, to make my hypothetical more realistic, what if you and a hundred thousand others were assigned a hundred thousand families for whom to cover the healthcare costs- how would you feel?
You have the right to have you garbage picked up, because your municipality's elected leaders, to ensure the orderly protection of public health, have decided to provide common provision of garbage collectione. That doesn't mean you have an inalienable right to garbage collection.
Posted by Will Allen | August 31, 2007 3:24 PM
It does, if you think about it. I don't get that service for free, but I also don't have the option of not paying for it; I'll get kicked out of town eventually if I don't, because my refusal to participate would adversely impact the orderly protection of public health, which as you say government has decided is the right of all the citizens in the community. And government's ability to secure that right through legislation goes back to those very concepts I've been going over on here again and again and again.
Yancey, I would feel as if I was participating in a group effort to make sure those who needed health care were able to get it. I would be happy to do it, especially if I knew that in return for my participation I would be taken care of if *I* ever needed help.
It's not a fair question because it would never happen in the real world. It's also not a fair question because it's an artificially-constructed scenario skewed towards your desired answer.
No, it is not unfair. The two scenarios I outlined are identical from the perspective of the individual, but you seem to be more comfortable with the second of these because you are part of a group subsidizing another group.
Your protection would then be provided by someone other than the family you were subsidizing. To illustrate, I will go back to the singular example: You subsidize the healthcare of a stranger and pay for your own. However, if you get ill and can't cover your healthcare, then someone else has to be assigned you, and still another has to be assigned the one you subsidized. And we don't have to even apply this logic to healthcare alone, as you pointed out in your first reply.
I only asked the question because I often have liberals dismiss the idea that redistribution of income by coercion should be called slavery in any degree. If the group redistribution is not slavery, then neither is the individual to individual forced transfer, and it does not matter that the one is not a real world possibility (though, I think you are thinking of the United States rather than the world in general since the individual version of slavery is still in practice in some places of the world).
Yancey, you're reducing this whole scenario ad absurdum aren't you?
All of this business about assigning certain individuals to take care of other individuals seems to be missing a few rather large points about the social contract. We aren't discussing one group beating up another and taking its money within a state of anarchy. We're discussing the rights and responsibilities of individuals within a state, and the responsibilities of the state to its citizens.
In a typical universal health care scheme, individuals have the right to receive certain health care benefits either free of charge, or for a small copay. The government has the responsibility to arrange payment for these services. And healthy, productive citizens have the responsibility to pay taxes that fund these services. It's only a transfer of wealth away from you if you have the good fortune to stay healthy. If you have a serious injury or a treatable illness, the benefits are available to you and you do not have to die prematurely or go into massive debt to stay healthy.
The health care workers are hardly enslaved. They've chosen to be educated by tax-funded institutions, licensed by the state, and paid (handsomely, in many cases) for their efforts.
Unless you approach this issue from a first principle in which all taxation is theft, then this system is analogous to slavery in roughly the same way that polar bears compare to plankton. They fall into the same animal, vegetable, or mineral category, and the similarities end there. Yes, there is legal coercion and wealth transfer. And the comparison ends there.
It is possible to imagine a nightmarish scenario in which federal agents invade your home, chain you to a chair, and auction off your family heirlooms in order to give little Billy the appendectomy he needs. But this requires a very vivid imagination.
Rob, I'll stop asking you to read threads if you'll start doing so. You were the one to introduce the term "inalienable right" to the previous thread, and it was this term which I specifically reproduced when I first referred to slavery.
The two scenarios I outlined are identical from the perspective of the individual
Hardly. In the first case, I alone have to subsidize healthcare for an entire family, an impossible task. In the second, I contribute much less to a much larger group to accomplish the same goal. It is an entirely different situation.
There is no law written anywhere that says you as a human being have to pay income tax. There is a law that says if you want to be an American citizen, you have to pay income tax. That's a crucial difference. There's also a difference between actual slavery, where you have no control over anything you do, and voluntary membership in a society. If you want to quibble over voluntary versus involuntary and say we are all slaves because we are forced from birth to be members of society and contribute to the collective, I suppose you can make that argument but it really seems pointless to me. "No man is an island," certainly not anymore. The frontier is closed for now; perhaps if long-distance space travel becomes feasible things might be different. Until then, you have your choice of which collective arrangement you wish to be a part of, and the duties and rights each group assigns.
Rob, I'll stop asking you to read threads if you'll start doing so.
And I'll stop being snide and condescending to you when you stop doing the same to me. I've read every one of your posts, much as it has pained me to do so. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to demonstrate to you the basis of my positions. You continue to put me down like I'm some kind of newbie. If you disagree with me, fine, say so and explain why. There's no need to tut-tut about how sad it is that I believe something (because any idiot would obviously see the logic of your arguments and agree with you, so I must just be being purposely obtuse). The tone of your posts have always been dismissive of me from the get. If you're going to whine about the way you were treated by certain nameless persons who called themselves "liberals" in another thread, just go back and review what might have caused them to treat you that way. Netiquette begins at home.
Also, Rob, in that same thread, I clearly stated earlier that a legislature voting for the common provision of services like health care was entirely different than stating that one was claiming that one had an "inalienable right" to another person's labor, which is what made one an advocate of slavery. Apparently, you declined to read that comment, which caused to repeat the fallacy yet again in this thread that I had stated that single payer or universal health care necessarily entailed slavery.
Look, you may think it is snide, but I don't know how else to say it. Read what people actually write, lest you misstate their positions.
Stop claimimg that there are conditions under which you may have an inalienable right to the sweat of my brow, Rob, and I'll stop being dismissive of your claims. People who claim that they have an inalienable right to what is produced by my body are very threatening to me.
Seeing your last few posts, it occurs to me that you may have a unique view of what the word "inalienable" means. From Merriam Webster:
Inalienable: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred.
In your posts above you seem to imply that if one person were to renounce their citizenship and leave, then people such as yourself would not longer have a right to their labor, in the form of health care. Well, that means your right to their labor had been alienated. In contrast
, your right to express political speech cannot be alienated; it is not granted by government action or by other people's specific performance. It is yours and it cannot be alienated, even if someone were to illegitimately take action to prevent you from expressing your political speech.
In your posts above you seem to imply that if one person were to renounce their citizenship and leave, then people such as yourself would not longer have a right to their labor, in the form of health care.
Absolutely.
Well, that means your right to their labor had been alienated.
Right again. If someone removes themself from society, that society has no call on their resources. Just as they should expect nothing from the society of which they are no longer a member. This seems pretty elementary.
Will, there are no rights outside the context of a society. If I'm alone on a desert island, what does my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean? Who would grant or restrict those rights? There is no "society" of one. Rights only have effect in their property of governing behavior, and that only has meaning in the context of one individual's relationship to another. When the founders speak of "inalienable rights," I take that to mean rights that OUR society recognizes as inherent in being a human being. But that declaration can only have real effect within OUR society, because our society is the group that has declared them. Just because WE have declared them as "inalienable" doesn't make them binding on those OUTSIDE our society, no matter how much we would wish it so. (Note that as a matter of principle, we extend those rights to those outside our society to the extent that we can; but that doesn't mean we can expect those rights to be reciprocated.)
So again, your argument doesn't make any sense to me. Just because someone leaves my society doesn't mean I, still a member of it, don't have the same rights as I had before.
Talk to Andrei Sakharov about the right to political speech being "inalienable" in the sense you mean. Soviet society did not consider such a right as inalienable, and sent millions to the gulags as a result. Your American rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were similarly not recognized there, and were quite effectively "alienated." Does that mean there are no such things as "inalienable rights?"
Apparently, you declined to read that comment, which caused to repeat the fallacy yet again in this thread that I had stated that single payer or universal health care necessarily entailed slavery.
No, I read it and every one of your comments. I was advocating single payer, and you said that meant I was advocating slavery because (I assume) it meant doctors would be forced to provide me their labor. I think it was pretty clear. Maybe you meant to say something else, and I would encourage you to revise and extend your remarks.
Look, you may think it is snide, but I don't know how else to say it.
The only way to disagree with me is to in essence call me a blockhead?
Stop claimimg that there are conditions under which you may have an inalienable right to the sweat of my brow, Rob, and I'll stop being dismissive of your claims. People who claim that they have an inalienable right to what is produced by my body are very threatening to me.
As you are a member of the society of which I am a member, I DO have a right to the sweat of your brow. As you do of mine. That's what it means to be a member of a society. We support each other. That support is generally expressed in the form of taxes paid to government, seeing as how I have no idea how to build a road or fire a gun; I give money to government and expect it to find people who can do those things. If you can't agree that that is what constitutes a society, then I suppose we're just going to keep disagreeing about everything.
Where is the difference between the individual case and the group case? The only fundamental difference is that the payer does not know the identity of the recipient. Other than that, the effects on both are identical.
I will ask you- why do you think liberalrob was more willing to accept the second hypothetical of a group to group redistribution, but not the individual to individual version? What, exactly, made one more acceptable than the other? I note that neither one of you seems to want to directly answer the question regarding the first hypothetical, but choose rather to claim it has no real world meaning.
Don't misunderstand me- I am not questioning liberalrob's or your acceptance of either hypothetical as completely appropriate, especially in the case where you bear the burden- you are both entitled to your perception of what price you are willing to pay to live in a society. What I am attacking is the idea that I or others can't call it slavery. If I am wrong to call it slavery, then I have to ask whether either of you feel any degree of redistribution is too much, and if the answer is yes, what is too much, and if this threshold is exceeded, how would you describe it?
I might check my population densities in the Talking Telecom post before I started correcting others.
Just before where they wrote the part where it is stated that a person has an inalienable right to anything which others provide, and makes the person happy.
I guess "living constitution" now means "living up to the expectations that validates [insert your favorite political philosophy here]". Well, it's always been like that but at least we all agreed on what was printed on the paper...
Yeah, that is the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That's life and liberty. I'm sure pursuit of happiness is distributed amongst the other amendments, possibly it is entirely enshrined by the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." (that's a joke).
It might even be argued that the Constitution was required to encompass that which is in the Declaration. It was the Declaration that formed a new country, the Constitution merely outlines the governmental system of that country. It's not an argument I'd accept, but I don't find it entirely baseless.
Njorl: The real joke is pretending that the Tenth Amendment continues to mean anything:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.
Personally, I think they a typesetter accidentally left that one out while composing the Times version of the Consitution, and an editor filled the blank space with "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" figuring someone would fact-check it and correct it later. When you think about it, it makes their editorial positions quite understandable ;-)
So the editorial writers and editors made a mistake. Does it in any way detract from the substantive point made by the editorial? Or is this just another invitation from the libertarians to commit genocide on a nation of straw men, as Will Allen has begun?
Szr: The mistake caters to the common limited government complaint (now commonly used by libertarians) that proponents of government activity do not understand the Constitution, and thus the role of government.
I agree with the legislation, but mixing up the Declaration and Constitution is cringe-worthy coming from the Editors of a respected paper (or taunt worthy, if one happens to dislike that paper).
Au contraire, szr. I was informed last week in this forum, by people who did not call themselves "strawmen", but rather, "liberals", that they had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, to be performed by their fellow citizens, called "health care", because absent their being the beneficiaries of that human labor, they could not pursue happiness.
DPT: Fair enough. Good point. It is a cringe-worthy mistake. And a good dose of taunting is to be expected.
Well, okay, but anybody arguing that people have a right to own firearms with which to shoot themselves in the head is just asking to be turned into an Onion article.
Oh wait!
My guess is that the previous commentators were referring to something else in the Constitution about "promot(ing) the general welfare". I don't see how understanding this to allow Federal support for particular public policies that promote the general welfare like, say, heath care, is a tortured reading of the Constitution.
Well, szr, as I tried to expain those "liberals", it is a far different thing to say that the majority, via their elected representatives, has decided to promote the general welfare via the common provision of health care (although any honest reading of the Constitution would conclude that the Amendment process would need be employed, I think), and saying that any citizen has an "inalienable right" to the labor known as "health care", to be provided by another citizen. These "liberals" were unable to appreciate the nuance, unfortunately.
I was informed last week in this forum, by people who did not call themselves "strawmen", but rather, "liberals", that they had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, to be performed by their fellow citizens, called "health care", because absent their being the beneficiaries of that human labor, they could not pursue happiness.
No, Will Allen, people who don't receive health care don't merely have their pursuit of happiness thwarted, they die. As in, the opposite of life. Get your straw men in a nice, orderly row before proceeding any further.
And Internet Ronin, there's this thing called the Fourteenth Amendment that circumscribes the Tenth. You might want to read it sometime.
La Follette, there were people who lived into their nineties before the advent of modern health care, and all people die, regardless of health care received. That doesn't give you an "inalienable right" to that which can only be obtained by your fellow citizens' labor.
In any case, these "liberals" said to me that they could not pursue happiness without health care, thus they had an "inalienable right" to that form of human labor. Such is modern "liberalism", I guess.
Will, that argument makes no sense. A commentator on a post on a blog days ago provides you with all the evidence you need in order to understand and dismiss modern liberalism? If your standards are that low, I'll do you one better!
Patrick Michaels of the Cato institute is completely incoherent on issues of climate change. For instance, he claims there's lots of controversy about climate change. Except their isn't. A 2004 review of all peer reviewed science articles on climate change found not a single one which challenged the consensus. Ergo, Patrick Michaels is provably wrong and a silly person. But such is modern "libertarianism" I guess.
At least my version of the genetic falacy relies on an actual libertarian fellow at a libertarian institution, and not some random blog post.
Please, think about the strawchildren!
Not long after government officials began taking an oath to the president.
LaFollette, I thought it was obvious my comment was a joke. I'm sorry you misunderstood my intent. I certainly do appreciate that greater minds than mine have struggled, decade after decade, with the meaning, and appropriate application of, various amendments, including the tenth and the fourteenth. That said, I thought it humorous that a newspaper like the Times, which, IIRC, has on more than one occasion lamented the ignorance of the American public when it comes to civic affairs and the actual content of treasured public documents, printed such an error. That's all I meant by my comment. Sounds like you interpreted a lot more than was there. Perhaps you were thinking of someone else's comment.
Hey, szr, I didn't call them "liberals"; that's what they labeled themselves. I just thought there was a lot of irony in someone calling himself a "liberal" while claiming an "inalienable right" to the labor of other human beings, and I'll gladly concede that not all people who label themsleves "liberals" hold to such positions.
I have no position on Patrick Michaels, but I'll say that if he calls himself a "libertarian" while advocating that those who differ with him on climate change be sanctioned by the state, it would be similarly ironic.
In any case, I really try to avoid the use of labels like "conservative", "neoconservative", "liberal", "progressive", "libertarian", and the like these days, because people have such wildly different notions of what those labels entail.
LaFollete - This seems logical on its face, but may be an overgeneralization. Diagnostics, hygiene, diet and lifestyle significantly improve lifespan. So does good emergency care. There's very little evidence, though, that the amount spent on chronic healthcare treatments for a society significantly affects average lifespan for a society. There are exceptions to this, but few. People are better off spending their money on food and exercise than being forced to shell out for expensive end-of-life treatments against their will.
This comment deleted for rampant trolling
I always liked the Declaration of Independence better anyway. It's easer to read.
The change was added at the same time that the First Amendment was changed to permit control of political speech and the Fifth Amendment was changed to permit the "taking" of private property from one person for the benefit of another person.
These changes, like others before them, were based on emanations and penumbras, felt in the presence of other constitutions or current political consensus.
This is all just part of the continuing refinement of the inconvenient and time consuming amendment process described by the framers.
Ed, didn't you hear? The Amendment process was just inserted when the boys were trying to cut a little bit of the Philly heat that summer with a few pulls, and they wanted to look like they were still working, instead of tying one on after lunch one Friday afternoon. They actually didn't intend for anybody to go through all that bother and fuss!
Actually, writing the whole document was kinda' just a time filler for when the fellas couldn't get good tee times that summer. They really just meant to say that Congress can do anything it wants which it deems will promote the general welfare. They just enumerated a bunch of stuff on the days when couldn't get to smackin' the Titlelist before 3 P.M..
And you call yourself a Libertarian? So when did the 14th amendment get repealed?
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Everyone knows that pursuit of happiness derives from "property" as John Locke used the term.
The phrase is based on the writings of John Locke, who expressed a similar concept of "life, liberty, and estate (or property)". While Locke said that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions", Adam Smith coined the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". The expression "pursuit of happiness" was coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his 1759 novel Rasselas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
So this IS in the Constitution.
My guess is that the previous commentators were referring to something else in the Constitution about "promot(ing) the general welfare". I don't see how understanding this to allow Federal support for particular public policies that promote the general welfare like, say, heath care, is a tortured reading of the Constitution.
You're totally serious, aren't you?
You gotta hand it to liberals. They get Orwell-- in a way that few do.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.
It's a good line, if not as poetic as the D of I. And if you're not too involved in slamming the NYT, you can make the case that the Constitution's immediate purpose was to codify the right to life liberty & POH stated in the D of I, since the preamble above seems to be pretty congruent with it.
Unless you really want to be a dick about it.
The New York Times should hire a law professor to proofread their editorials.
Will Allen, I stand by everything I said before.
EVERYTHING.
jonathan, you said it perfectly. Well done.
Will Allen - I didn't see the thread you're referring to. If someone actually made the claim you describe, he or she is (how do I say this nicely?) probably not the sharpest tool in the liberal shed.
I do not believe that the Constitution provides a "Right to Life" that entails a right to free health care. Rather, it makes pragmatic sense for the government to be the health care guarantor of last resort in an era of spiraling health care costs and cutthroat insurance company practices. It's a matter of regulating commerce and providing for the public welfare. Reasonable people may disagree.
I'm simply pointing out that health care often involves matters of life and death, not merely matters of "pursuing happiness." Much of the structural inefficiency in our health care system stems from the fact that people die without emergency care, therefore hospitals provide emergency care to the uninsured, and therefore the costs are passed along to people who don't abuse the system. The libertarian argument that "they don't have the right to demand that I pay for their health care" is silly, because you're already paying for their health care.
And I must say that any argument against universal health care that is based on the logical premise that "some people lived to be 90 before modern health care" is even duller than the straw-liberal you're whacking away at.
Ryan W-- I don't necessarily disagree. See above. Interestingly enough, nearly every country with universal health care pays less for end-of-life care than we do. Presumably this is because nobody likes to pay more taxes than necessary. So why are Americans willing to pay such high insurance premiums... which are deducted from our paychecks by private companies?
Internet Ronin-- That was just intended as a snide comment, like yours was.
LaFollette, again, I am making no argument for or against universal health care, per se. I don't feel like writing a few thousand words on the topic right now. My original post in this thread, and comments after it, merely pertain to what I encountered in this forum last week, which was the position that people had an "inalienable right" to a particular form of human labor, either because it was necessary for their life, or for them to pursue happiness. This merely struck me as an extremely odd exercise in interpreting the Constitution or Declaration of Independence, to say nothing of moral reasoning in general.
I agree that it's a poor understanding of our nation's founding documents to conclude that we have an "inalienable right" to health care. But do we, as Americans, have the right to certain health care services? Absolutely. If American citizens have no right whatsoever to labor provided by designated people (EMT workers, emergency room staff), and paid for by society at large, then this would entail a health care system in which people are routinely left bleeding in the streets.
It may not be an inalienable right enshrined in the Constitution. But there IS this thing called the Ninth Amendment. And, in practice, all Americans currently have the right, established by legislation, to receive certain types of labor provided by licensed health professionals without regard to their ability to pay. The relevant questions are how should we pay for these services and where do we draw the line?
I understand that you were just highlighting a weak argument. I'm just pointing out that this particular weak argument is a poorly phrased version of a much stronger argument.
What's odd to me is the concept that the individual who benefits from society owes nothing in return, and that the individual who contributes to society should expect nothing in return. Denying the existence or morality of "social compacts" is odd. Engaging in sophistry by equating single-payer healthcare with slavery is odd (every profession is slavery, using that bizarre construction). Being interminably and purposely obtuse is odd.
Let me try again. I believe that health care should be viewed as a right, not a privilege. My belief is (in my opinion) supported by the Declaration of Independence's statement that life and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights, the securing of which is the reason governments are instituted among men. The Constitution is our declaration of what the form of our particular government shall be, in order to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, which I assume includes securing those inalienable rights (by definition, otherwise why institute a government at all). Since I view health care as vital to life and the pursuit of happiness, I expect our government to make sure I have it. Not just "access" to it, that I actually have the thing itself. To the extent that this does not happen, our government has failed in its responsibilities; it has not delivered on securing my inalienable rights, which is why I consented to be governed by it.
I don't care how health care gets delivered to me, as long as it is always there when I need it. As it happens, I think we've seen enough evidence that leaving it generally up to the private sector doesn't do that. We also have many examples of health care being paid for by the government resulting in far better overall service at less cost. I think it's time we gave that a try.
You seem overly concerned that doctors not be prevented from charging whatever the market will bear for their services. I am saying that health care should not be seen as a way to get rich, but as a profession to provide a service. Making sure everyone receives that service is, I think, a worthy goal; and for a government founded on liberal principles, a duty.
Megan is concerned that wealth not be transferred from the young and healthy to the old and sick. Her purely economic analysis, bereft of any consideration for the societal imperative to care for the sick or any other moral consideration, is another one I reject utterly. Her analysis would result in the abolition of health care in toto, as there would be insufficient financing available to care for the old and sick, and the young and healthy would not need it and would not be helping pay for it. That's a non-starter with me.
I agree that it's a poor understanding of our nation's founding documents to conclude that we have an "inalienable right" to health care.
They DO say that governments are instituted among men to secure the inalienable rights of life and the pursuit of happiness, don't they? I contend that being healthy is indivisible from being alive and pursuing happiness. Do you disagree?
Well, LaFollette, I did try to explain to those folks that rights to goods and services, obtained via common provision, and established by legislation, is a far different thing from saying that one has an "inalienable right" to a good or service, but it was not a nuance they wished to examine.
No, you found being snide and condescending a much more fruitful line of argument.
Your "nuance" is nonsensical. The two things are not incompatible. One might argue that they are in fact complementary. As well as complimentary.
liberalrob, the threads would improve if you would actually respond to what people wrote, instead of what you merely imagined they wrote. I never equated single payer health care with slavery. You just created that equation in your mind. I stated that to have an inalienable right to another citizen's labor is to make that citizen your slave. The two statements aren't even close to being the same.
You have the right to have you garbage picked up, because your municipality's elected leaders, to ensure the orderly protection of public health, have decided to provide common provision of garbage collectione. That doesn't mean you have an inalienable right to garbage collection.
Again liberalrob, please read what was written.
I never said they were incompatible. I said they were not identical.
liberalrob,
I am curious about something. What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a family of strangers for whom to cover health insurance costs. How would you feel?
Probably as odd as if he was given a family to be his private ambulance driver.
liberalrob is an advocate of slavery, and that isn't hyperbole. He actually thinks that he has an inalienable right to the labor of people who provide health care to him. Alas, this is what the term "liberal" has come to.
Posted by Will Allen | August 24, 2007 1:48 PM
That post of yours came in the context of my advocacy of single-payer health care. That was your first post to me in that thread. So much for "I never equated single payer health care with slavery." Go back and read what *I* said, why don't you. If you jump in the middle of a thread, you're supposed to be aware of all that has come before.
I stated that to have an inalienable right to another citizen's labor is to make that citizen your slave.
I think you're wrong. I think it means you have agreed to be part of a group, and a condition of being in that group is that you contribute to the group. In return, the group will give you some benefits of being a member of the group. If you want to call that "slavery" all I can say is I think you have a strange conception of slavery.
Again liberalrob, please read what was written.
I never said they were incompatible. I said they were not identical.
Well, I don't understand your point in making that statement then. If you have an inalienable right to a service, I think it is incumbent on government to see that it is provided. I don't see any way around that. HOW government assures that is open to debate, but the DUTY to provide it is not, in my opinion. You're either arguing that there is no such right, or you're arguing that government has no duty to secure such rights. Either way I disagree.
What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a family of strangers for whom to cover health insurance costs. How would you feel?
Posted by Yancey Ward | August 31, 2007 4:01 PM
Yancey, is that a realistic possibility? Come on.
The whole point of having a society is to spread out responsibility for service provision across all of society, so no one person has to shoulder impossible burdens. What if a law were passed that assigned you, and you alone, a squad of soldiers to equip for service in Iraq? It's not a fair question.
Probably as odd as if he was given a family to be his private ambulance driver.
Posted by mad6798j | August 31, 2007 4:03 PM
Ha ha.
the threads would improve if you would actually respond to what people wrote
Exhibit A under "snide and condescending."
Not a fair question? Why not?
My answer to your question is that I would feel like a slave.
However, to make my hypothetical more realistic, what if you and a hundred thousand others were assigned a hundred thousand families for whom to cover the healthcare costs- how would you feel?
You have the right to have you garbage picked up, because your municipality's elected leaders, to ensure the orderly protection of public health, have decided to provide common provision of garbage collectione. That doesn't mean you have an inalienable right to garbage collection.
Posted by Will Allen | August 31, 2007 3:24 PM
It does, if you think about it. I don't get that service for free, but I also don't have the option of not paying for it; I'll get kicked out of town eventually if I don't, because my refusal to participate would adversely impact the orderly protection of public health, which as you say government has decided is the right of all the citizens in the community. And government's ability to secure that right through legislation goes back to those very concepts I've been going over on here again and again and again.
I think I hear crickets.
Yancey, I would feel as if I was participating in a group effort to make sure those who needed health care were able to get it. I would be happy to do it, especially if I knew that in return for my participation I would be taken care of if *I* ever needed help.
It's not a fair question because it would never happen in the real world. It's also not a fair question because it's an artificially-constructed scenario skewed towards your desired answer.
I think I hear crickets.
Posted by Yancey Ward | August 31, 2007 4:57 PM
Strange, they usually don't come out during the day.
No, it is not unfair. The two scenarios I outlined are identical from the perspective of the individual, but you seem to be more comfortable with the second of these because you are part of a group subsidizing another group.
Your protection would then be provided by someone other than the family you were subsidizing. To illustrate, I will go back to the singular example: You subsidize the healthcare of a stranger and pay for your own. However, if you get ill and can't cover your healthcare, then someone else has to be assigned you, and still another has to be assigned the one you subsidized. And we don't have to even apply this logic to healthcare alone, as you pointed out in your first reply.
I only asked the question because I often have liberals dismiss the idea that redistribution of income by coercion should be called slavery in any degree. If the group redistribution is not slavery, then neither is the individual to individual forced transfer, and it does not matter that the one is not a real world possibility (though, I think you are thinking of the United States rather than the world in general since the individual version of slavery is still in practice in some places of the world).
Yancey, you're reducing this whole scenario ad absurdum aren't you?
All of this business about assigning certain individuals to take care of other individuals seems to be missing a few rather large points about the social contract. We aren't discussing one group beating up another and taking its money within a state of anarchy. We're discussing the rights and responsibilities of individuals within a state, and the responsibilities of the state to its citizens.
In a typical universal health care scheme, individuals have the right to receive certain health care benefits either free of charge, or for a small copay. The government has the responsibility to arrange payment for these services. And healthy, productive citizens have the responsibility to pay taxes that fund these services. It's only a transfer of wealth away from you if you have the good fortune to stay healthy. If you have a serious injury or a treatable illness, the benefits are available to you and you do not have to die prematurely or go into massive debt to stay healthy.
The health care workers are hardly enslaved. They've chosen to be educated by tax-funded institutions, licensed by the state, and paid (handsomely, in many cases) for their efforts.
Unless you approach this issue from a first principle in which all taxation is theft, then this system is analogous to slavery in roughly the same way that polar bears compare to plankton. They fall into the same animal, vegetable, or mineral category, and the similarities end there. Yes, there is legal coercion and wealth transfer. And the comparison ends there.
It is possible to imagine a nightmarish scenario in which federal agents invade your home, chain you to a chair, and auction off your family heirlooms in order to give little Billy the appendectomy he needs. But this requires a very vivid imagination.
Rob, I'll stop asking you to read threads if you'll start doing so. You were the one to introduce the term "inalienable right" to the previous thread, and it was this term which I specifically reproduced when I first referred to slavery.
The two scenarios I outlined are identical from the perspective of the individual
Hardly. In the first case, I alone have to subsidize healthcare for an entire family, an impossible task. In the second, I contribute much less to a much larger group to accomplish the same goal. It is an entirely different situation.
There is no law written anywhere that says you as a human being have to pay income tax. There is a law that says if you want to be an American citizen, you have to pay income tax. That's a crucial difference. There's also a difference between actual slavery, where you have no control over anything you do, and voluntary membership in a society. If you want to quibble over voluntary versus involuntary and say we are all slaves because we are forced from birth to be members of society and contribute to the collective, I suppose you can make that argument but it really seems pointless to me. "No man is an island," certainly not anymore. The frontier is closed for now; perhaps if long-distance space travel becomes feasible things might be different. Until then, you have your choice of which collective arrangement you wish to be a part of, and the duties and rights each group assigns.
Rob, I'll stop asking you to read threads if you'll start doing so.
And I'll stop being snide and condescending to you when you stop doing the same to me. I've read every one of your posts, much as it has pained me to do so. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to demonstrate to you the basis of my positions. You continue to put me down like I'm some kind of newbie. If you disagree with me, fine, say so and explain why. There's no need to tut-tut about how sad it is that I believe something (because any idiot would obviously see the logic of your arguments and agree with you, so I must just be being purposely obtuse). The tone of your posts have always been dismissive of me from the get. If you're going to whine about the way you were treated by certain nameless persons who called themselves "liberals" in another thread, just go back and review what might have caused them to treat you that way. Netiquette begins at home.
Also, Rob, in that same thread, I clearly stated earlier that a legislature voting for the common provision of services like health care was entirely different than stating that one was claiming that one had an "inalienable right" to another person's labor, which is what made one an advocate of slavery. Apparently, you declined to read that comment, which caused to repeat the fallacy yet again in this thread that I had stated that single payer or universal health care necessarily entailed slavery.
Look, you may think it is snide, but I don't know how else to say it. Read what people actually write, lest you misstate their positions.
Stop claimimg that there are conditions under which you may have an inalienable right to the sweat of my brow, Rob, and I'll stop being dismissive of your claims. People who claim that they have an inalienable right to what is produced by my body are very threatening to me.
Seeing your last few posts, it occurs to me that you may have a unique view of what the word "inalienable" means. From Merriam Webster:
Inalienable: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred.
In your posts above you seem to imply that if one person were to renounce their citizenship and leave, then people such as yourself would not longer have a right to their labor, in the form of health care. Well, that means your right to their labor had been alienated. In contrast
, your right to express political speech cannot be alienated; it is not granted by government action or by other people's specific performance. It is yours and it cannot be alienated, even if someone were to illegitimately take action to prevent you from expressing your political speech.
Do you see the difference?
In your posts above you seem to imply that if one person were to renounce their citizenship and leave, then people such as yourself would not longer have a right to their labor, in the form of health care.
Absolutely.
Well, that means your right to their labor had been alienated.
Right again. If someone removes themself from society, that society has no call on their resources. Just as they should expect nothing from the society of which they are no longer a member. This seems pretty elementary.
Will, there are no rights outside the context of a society. If I'm alone on a desert island, what does my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean? Who would grant or restrict those rights? There is no "society" of one. Rights only have effect in their property of governing behavior, and that only has meaning in the context of one individual's relationship to another. When the founders speak of "inalienable rights," I take that to mean rights that OUR society recognizes as inherent in being a human being. But that declaration can only have real effect within OUR society, because our society is the group that has declared them. Just because WE have declared them as "inalienable" doesn't make them binding on those OUTSIDE our society, no matter how much we would wish it so. (Note that as a matter of principle, we extend those rights to those outside our society to the extent that we can; but that doesn't mean we can expect those rights to be reciprocated.)
So again, your argument doesn't make any sense to me. Just because someone leaves my society doesn't mean I, still a member of it, don't have the same rights as I had before.
Talk to Andrei Sakharov about the right to political speech being "inalienable" in the sense you mean. Soviet society did not consider such a right as inalienable, and sent millions to the gulags as a result. Your American rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were similarly not recognized there, and were quite effectively "alienated." Does that mean there are no such things as "inalienable rights?"
Apparently, you declined to read that comment, which caused to repeat the fallacy yet again in this thread that I had stated that single payer or universal health care necessarily entailed slavery.
No, I read it and every one of your comments. I was advocating single payer, and you said that meant I was advocating slavery because (I assume) it meant doctors would be forced to provide me their labor. I think it was pretty clear. Maybe you meant to say something else, and I would encourage you to revise and extend your remarks.
Look, you may think it is snide, but I don't know how else to say it.
The only way to disagree with me is to in essence call me a blockhead?
Stop claimimg that there are conditions under which you may have an inalienable right to the sweat of my brow, Rob, and I'll stop being dismissive of your claims. People who claim that they have an inalienable right to what is produced by my body are very threatening to me.
As you are a member of the society of which I am a member, I DO have a right to the sweat of your brow. As you do of mine. That's what it means to be a member of a society. We support each other. That support is generally expressed in the form of taxes paid to government, seeing as how I have no idea how to build a road or fire a gun; I give money to government and expect it to find people who can do those things. If you can't agree that that is what constitutes a society, then I suppose we're just going to keep disagreeing about everything.
Lafollette Progressive,
Where is the difference between the individual case and the group case? The only fundamental difference is that the payer does not know the identity of the recipient. Other than that, the effects on both are identical.
I will ask you- why do you think liberalrob was more willing to accept the second hypothetical of a group to group redistribution, but not the individual to individual version? What, exactly, made one more acceptable than the other? I note that neither one of you seems to want to directly answer the question regarding the first hypothetical, but choose rather to claim it has no real world meaning.
Don't misunderstand me- I am not questioning liberalrob's or your acceptance of either hypothetical as completely appropriate, especially in the case where you bear the burden- you are both entitled to your perception of what price you are willing to pay to live in a society. What I am attacking is the idea that I or others can't call it slavery. If I am wrong to call it slavery, then I have to ask whether either of you feel any degree of redistribution is too much, and if the answer is yes, what is too much, and if this threshold is exceeded, how would you describe it?