In Tuesday night's debate Barack Obama surprised many viewers who had not yet fallen asleep by declaring that Americans have a right to health care. I wonder what he meant by that. Surely it's not a constitutional right, since nowhere in that document can we find such a right enumerated (of course, neither is it stated in the constitution that a woman has a right to kill her unborn child, but that omission doesn't mean much to liberals who reason that since it should be there we can safely act as if it is there).
Maybe Senator Obama meant that health care, or health insurance, is a human right, but, if so, where does he get that idea? It can only be a right of any kind if the rest of us are somehow obligated to provide it, but what could possibly obligate you to pay for my health insurance? Perhaps Obama derives the obligation from his Christian faith, but if so he's importing into the public square religious reasons for public policy, and that's illegitimate, as we've all come to learn from the good people at the ACLU.
Moreover, why would there be a human right to health insurance or care but not, say, to food or transportation or shelter? These are more basic needs than health insurance which many people can do without for years. Once we agree with Senator Obama that each of us has a right to be insured do we not also have to agree that the government, i.e. you and I, has a deeper obligation to provide everyone with a house, a car, and a full refrigerator?
Senator Obama has inadvertantly given us an object lesson in the injustice inherent in liberalism. Liberals, in order to win votes, persuade the masses that they will open up to them the public purse. This sort of demagoguery appeals to the great bulk of the population, but it's totally irresponsible and only encourages the masses to believe that they must also have a right to every other amenity in life. Of course, liberals encourage this thinking and believe it a grand act of compassion to take from those who work and give it to those who don't, or can't.
No one has a problem with helping those who are physically or mentally unable to help themselves, but the idea of helping those who choose not to help themselves, who make consistently bad choices in life and then expect the taxpayer to shield them from the consequences of those choices, rankles. The liberal solution, Obama's solution, is to tell us that the people who have worked hard and played by the rules have an obligation to support those who don't. A lot of folks see this as grossly unjust.
RLC
