"Rights" or wrong

"Rights" or wrong

A while back, during the 2010 health care debate in Washington, I wrote an article discussing what a 'right' is. Given the current ruckus about the national "right" to birth control, and the Virginia ultrasound mandate, I thought it would be appropriate to further explore the definition of this tricky word.

The declaration of independence famously explains "that [men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  The bill of rights found in the constitution expands on  this outlining the right to free speech, the right bear arms, the right to trial, etc. When examining these rights,  we find that they are, without exception, protections against government violation of the initial "god given" rights.  i.e. all of them are liberties that we are born with and are only limited by oppressive power.

Recently however, many have argued that government services are needed to ensure our rights are upheld. The birth control debacle is a perfect example of this.  The left is arguing that women's rights are not protected unless "free" birth control is provided as a part of our insurance coverage . This is a dangerous misunderstanding of rights and goes far beyond the idea of god-given rights.  Imagine if we took that methodology and applied it to the right to bear arms saying that because we have the right to gun ownership, guns therefore must be financed and provided for the citizens in order to uphold our rights. There would (justifiably) be a tremendous outcry against this, but it is exactly the same concept. Saying that the right to have or own something somehow equate so the right to have it provided for you gives the government an unlimited mandate to provide anything and everything for its citizens.

At a time when semantics and word games are used to manipulate public support for otherwise non-senseical legislation (patriot act anyone?) we must carefully protect the use of the word 'rights'. After all, if the term is used to identify any and every perk that legislators think up, it will cease to hold is distinguished meaning and our true liberties will become nothing more than a list of wants and desires subject to the whims of Washington.