Health care is a right the same as guns are a right. You have the right to provide it, or to purchase it as you are able, and government should have no role in the matter except as protector of your rights.
I know that wasn’t the framework of the question however. Honestly put, the question would have been, “Do you believe free healthcare, paid by someone else under threats from the government, is your right?”
But liberty isn’t even on the table for discussion in this election. How can we be bothered with such abstractions as liberty when we’re worried about the crisis-of-the-day, and who is going to take care of us and keep us all safe, happy and warm?
Lyle @ UltiMAK
October 8, 2008
In the comments.
[We have a long way to go. Sometimes it takes Lyle and others to put it in proper perspective.–Joe]
Right? Hell … make it a requirement.
Want to vote? Buy yourself a gun, and show up with it at the polling place.
No gun? No vote for you!
There is precedent for real property ownership as prerequisite to voting. I’m not sure buying a 200 dollar gun fits with the whole, “As a land owner I have demonstrated my stake in the outcomes of elections and their implications to our cherished property rights” test. Requiring mere gun ownership would be like requiring church membership or participation in a radio or TV station, newspaper, blog, et al. You may be able to make a credible case for military service as prerequisite to voting, but there you end up with a military-controlled government, which the Founders explicitly proscribed with the constitution.
These days, you don’t have to be able to read or write, speak English, or know a single thing about American history to vote. Voting is now considered more of a right than anything in the actual Bill of Rights. But then, people’s very livelihoods were never supposed to depend on the outcomes of elections, and now they do.
I agree you have a right to good health. You a right to get out of the house and lose weight. You have the right to buy good food and stay out of McDonald’s. You have the right to drive without being under the influence of drugs and alcohol. I’m tired of seeing you at the hospital when your wounds won’t heal or you have COPD exacerbation because you won’t quit smoking. When you have back pain, lose weight, do your exercise, and stop coming to the hospital ER for more pain medications.
How many times do you have to have instructions on taking your medications and changing your diet because you have diabetes? That is why you are in the hospital with your toes turning black with gangrene. First you will need surgery to take off your toes, then it be the rest of your foot, then your leg below the knee. And finally the rest of your leg. All of that might have been prevented if you had lost weight, exercised, and quit smoking.
I’m tired of paying for your health care.
In my experience of almost 30 years in medicine welfare patients have the worse record of compliance with medical instruction. They have the worst history of taking care of their health and they are the most demanding of the best they can get from health care workers. Especially compared to those who have worked hard all their lives. The people who worked come in, do what they need to do, and want to go home and get on with their lives. The parasites want to be fixed without having to do any work of their own.
Yes, the whole concept of rights has been diluted, redefined, misconstrued, misunderstood. There should be a class on the subject in primary education; “Human rights; what they are and what they are not– a historical case study” or something like that. By the time kids reach high school they should have a firm grasp of it. But of course, that would be the poison pill– death of “public education”, wouldn’t it?
Walter E. Williams gives us a 100 level primer on it here.
Buying a weapon is a requirement to vote in at least one Swiss Canton.
I still think the notion has merit.
I understand it’s been done. I fail to see what it would change, unless you’re also required to demonstrate a certain level of proficiency with it (though not at the polls I would hope). Some anti-gun lefty can get the cheapest, pot-metal .22 pistol and leave it in its case, bringing out the receipt at election time each year. What does that achieve? It’s created another “gun owner”– an armed lefty. So? Or are you advocating mandatory range time and a certain score also, thus proving the readiness of the citizen militia? Now you have armed and trained lefties. May as well go whole hog and issue matching brown shirts to them so they look all nice and spanky too. When they organize and march in the streets at night carrying rifles and torches, demanding higher Social Security payments, it’ll make some great news video and we can all be really impressed.
It could just as easily be construed as nothing but a form of poll tax– the minimum price of a “firearm”.
Regardless; unless we have the concept of rights understood and embraced by the majority (that was the subject of the original post after all) tweaking the election process this way or that way would seem of little value. There is plenty of gun ownership in some of the most violent, stinking socialist hell-hole countries on the planet. Oh goody. Democracy without protected rights = gang rule.