An Analysis of Rights

Thanks to RJ for the comment on my healthcare post.  I wrote a response, and it ended up being so long that I figured it deserved it’s own topic.  Defining what is a right is a separate philisophical issue that isn’t jsut about healthcare specifically, and I wanted to do it justice in its own post.

So, here is is the comment from RJ to start things off:

Part of your arguement is based on rights not requiring intervention from others. I’m curious to know how you feel about education. I’m strongly of the belief that a child has the right to an education. Additionally I think citizens have the right to security hence the need for police and military.

I don’t nescesarily disagree with your agruements but I think you should consider ones rights a bit more carefully.

It indeed does need a more careful look, so I’m going to try and give a quick overview of how I see it.

I actually had a very, very long conversation with my wife about defining rights. It is incredibly hard to define and, I think, it is difficult to take a libertarian stance without sounding like a monster sometimes.

Part of the beauty of the United States Constitution is that the bill of rights is actually a set of negative rights rather than positive ones. That means that our rights are phrased as what the government CANNOT do to us rather than what we as people are entitled to under the force of government. The only one that is slightly different, I believe, is the right to trial by jury. But, that is even unique in the respect that even though it requires service from others, the idea behind it is still to protect againt government tyranny in trying cases against accused citizens.

I think Thomas Jefferson defined rights best (i.e., what we are entitled to): “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

With that in mind, I think education follows along the same analysis as healthcare. I really don’t think we are entitled to education. It again requires the services of other human beings to give you your entitlement, this time being teachers rather than doctors. Also, I don’t think I went into this issue with healthcare, but if it is a right, you have to define what is the threshold or baseline level of education to satisfy that right. I’m sure the students of Washington DC could sue the government over their rights being violated because their education is incredibly sub-par compared to a school in a suburban upper class neighborhood, even though they are all public schools. Are we then entitled to a certain graduation rate or the same number of classes offered no matter where you are considering it is an equal right of humanity?

Up until the mid-1800’s education was largely private. The first national census conducted in 1840 found a near universal literacy rate in the white population (slavery issues aside) at around 97% when schools were largely private, whether at home or private schools.

Now, here is the catch that caused the debate with my wife: this all goes back to the belief that rights are negative in nature per Thomas Jefferson’s definition, where rights are unobstructed actions (i.e. no outside interference) that are only limited by the rights of others. I think the hang-up is that, in my view, rights then differ with what human beings SHOULD do for others. I think that is entirely a moral question, meaning that our notions of protecting the dignity of the human person should draw us into voluntary charity, with the emphasis on the word voluntary. No one should force us to give something to someone else, but we should want to do it out of our free will and care for humanity. So, a homeless man might not have a right to shelter (who should be forced to provide him with shelter?), but we should WANT to provide him with shelter. In summary, rights revolve around the entitlement to free action, but morality revolves around wanting to help the common good with our free action.

So, how does that all connect with education? Well, I believe that the people best able to determine what is best for them is themselves. I think it should be left up to the local community to decide how they are going to educate their children, and that is further beauty of the Constitution where everything not specificially given to the the government is retained by the people (well it needs to return to that notion, but that’s a different topic). In other words, we shouldn’t be forced to pay taxes to fund schools, but we should rather voluntarily contribute to the education of our children by privately paying for their education. Imagine the money you’d save to pay for your children’s education if it wasn’t taken by force? Then you could have the free choice of where to send them.

As for those who could not afford the education that others have, then I’m not against helping them receive education at all. However, I think that should be done by free choice by voluntary charity. You need to foster an environment where that is possible, though. The people in the local community should be the ones to decide how to best accomplish that, and if that is through LOCAL taxes then I might consider that a necessary evil, but that should still be decided on a community level as the level closest to the people and not the federal government. The morality and loss of community issues are a completely different issue, though.

The point is that, even though education may not be a “right,” it is something we human beings should want to provide our children with through voluntary action for the sake of the “good” (in an Aristotlean sense). Healthcare is the same way. And that’s why most of the time some people feel called to be teachers and doctors.

As for police and military protection, it is the same analysis but again more of the necessary evil. In a perfect society which doesn’t exist, there would be no violations of our rights, but because of human imperfection it is sometimes necessary to have protection for our rights to free action. That’s why the military is something we specifically charged the government with providing. Still, the government has that ability because it is something that originates with the people and we are simply consenting for the government to do it on our behalf. Protection of the health and welfare of the citizens is the same argument.

Still, we are not entitled to police and military protection. That is why police and military service is voluntary in this country. They are not our permanent servants because we have a right to their services. However, in an imperfect world, the people have decided that we are best served letting the government provide that protection, but they only provide it because we said they could. We have the right to have our rights protected, but we decided it is impractical to do that on a purely individual level.

Long story short, as I stated before, rights are what allow us to have free action, and morality is what dictates how we should treat other people with our free actions. You can’t vioalte the free actions of all because some human beings are selfish and won’t help their fellow man. However, we can also determine that our voluntary charity is best served through an administering body, whether it is a religious charity, not for profit organization, or, in the case of military protection, the government. But that is all based upon the free action of the people, and the free action of the people should always be allowed to revoke that consent.  We should always rely upon voluntary charity rather than involuntary giving through force, governmental or otherwise.

I hope that makes sense. That’s just the way I see things.

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