Contributed by: filbert Sunday, August 09 2009 @ 09:01 AM CST
A right is what you can do without anyone else being involved.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (originally, Jefferson wrote “property” rather than “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, by the way) are rights. You have the right to enjoy them, but you don’t have the right to demand that other people sacrifice theirs for yours–they’re rights for everybody, not just the privileged few.
There is a right to health, but there is no right to health care. When you say you have a right to health care, you’re saying that you have a right to command someone else’s behavior–in this case to command service for purposes of your own, personal, selfish health–without regard to the wants or needs of the person you’re commanding. There’s another word for that.
Slavery.