Stefanie wrote:
I would add this to the liberal myths...

7. Health care is a right.

This is what I'd really like to talk about. I'm not convinced that it isn't. Its not a recognized right in the United States today, but that may be because the US is behind the curve and not because its not actually a right.

Its obviously not a Constitutionally protected right, but I don't think anyone is arguing that. Could it be? Many federal Constitutional rights are constraints upon society. But can there be rights which create an obligation and not a constraint? What about the obligation to provide defense counsel in criminal trials? What about state constitutions that guarantee a right to a primary education?

So how do we decide what rights we should and shouldn't have. How do new rights become recognized? What makes something so important that it ought to be considered a right?

I like to think of healthcare like a society of boat people. Each person has their own boat. Randomly, the boats develop holes, and sink. Your boat has just developed such a hole. No one who owns one of the boats near you is willing to pick you up.

You have a choice, you can either force your way onto one of the boats, or you can die.

Is it immoral for you to save yourself by imposing yourself on another boat by force? Is there any reason you wouldn't choose to fight your way on to a boat if drowning is otherwise certain?

Do rights not exist when those who are denied those rights have no choice but war?

Put in this light, I'd say healthcare is more a right in need of recognition that speech. Ultimately, your choice to go to war to defend your freedom of speech is less clearly forced than your right to access healthcare. You CAN survive in a censorous society. Billions do. If you are dieing of cancer and you cannot afford treatment, you'll die.

In the middle ages, you'd have died anyway, and so healthcare was not enshrined as a right in English legal traditions. Today the situation has changed, and fundamental technological changes can change the structure of social relationships.... they can create new rights where they did not exist before....

For example, today, people who are cryonically frozen are legally dead, and it is illegal to cryonically freeze someone who is not legally dead. Its murder. But imagine if in the future it is a trivial matter to revive someone who is cryonically frozen. Would people who were cryonically frozen still be considered legally dead? Of course not. Technology would have changed the social status of those people.

RE: FIVE CONSERVATIVE MYTHS