Judges, politicians stand the term 'rights' on its head

ONCE UPON a time, the term "rights" meant something very different than it means today. When the New Hampshire and federal constitutions were enacted, it was considered self-evident that all men had certain unalienable rights, which came from our Creator, and that the purpose of government was to secure these rights, which included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is safe to say that today "rights" connotes something altogether different than at the end of the 18th century. Government, not our Creator, is considered to be the source of our rights. Additionally, rights no longer are freedom from government interference, but the use of the coercive power of government to control the affairs of others.

Consider the "right to an adequate education" that the New Hampshire Supreme Court invented in decisions rendered in 1993 and 1997. According to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the right to an adequate education includes that state government must "guarantee the funding" of an adequate education.

The only way that state government can "fund" education, or any government spending for that matter, is by borrowing or taxing. And any money that is borrowed eventually must be paid back, again by taxing. This means that when the court said in the Claremont decisions that state government must guarantee the funding of an adequate education, it was really saying that there must be some unspecified minimum level of taxation, which ultimately will be determined by the judiciary. (If you do not believe me, I suggest you read the Claremont decisions, which repeatedly say that "adequacy" is determined by the representative branches "in the first instance," which means that the court is reserving for itself the ultimate authority to determine how much taxing is "adequate.")

Ironically, the constitutional "right to an adequate education" described in the Claremont decisions is not a "right" at all as the term was understood at the time the New Hampshire Constitution was enacted. Rather, the right to an adequate education is the antithesis of a "right" as it contemplates the use of the coercive power of government to force its citizens to do something that its citizens may not want to do.

It is not only activist judges that are guilty of standing the term "rights" on its head. Politicians who actually stand for election also do quite a good job. Consider health care. The Clintons wanted to give us wallet sized identification cards that would have guaranteed us a "right to health care."

Of course, nobody was or is prevented from obtaining health care. I will grant that health insurance and health care costs are much higher than necessary, but that is because of governmental meddling and over-regulation, which is a story for another day. The point here is that there were and are no laws preventing anybody from buying health insurance or accessing health care.

The "right to health care" that the Clintons wanted to create would have entailed using the coercive power of government to make some people pay for other people's health care, with the government deciding for us what amount of health care would be appropriate. Sounds an awful lot like the New Hampshire Supreme Court's "right to an adequate education."

Another example of how the conception of rights has changed is the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. The original understanding was that the right to freedom of speech meant that government could not prohibit someone from expressing his or her viewpoint. Now, freedom of speech means that government must provide tawdry musicians a stage from which to broadcast obscenities so loudly that they can be heard miles away through closed windows. Apparently, for some, most notably a radio station with a penchant for employing puerile disc jockeys, screaming the "f-word" over a loudspeaker is today's equivalent to a public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Those who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged to support it with their lives, fortunes and honor. They valued freedom more than material things and security. The current conception of "rights" suggests that today many hold the opposite viewpoint.

They valued freedom more than material things and security.

Let's not over-romanticize the era. They believed in freedom except for people who were not male, white property owners. Not to mention all the laws that were enacted after the Constitution was adopted that infringed upon the rights to free speech, religious liberty, due process, etc. - all contrary to the freedoms they allegedly cared so much about.

All of the unconstitutional laws enacted in the two centuries after the adoption of the Constitution hardly disparage the authors of the Constitution. Nor were the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights exclusive to white male property owners.

But to get back to the point of this article, what left-wingers often declare today to be a "right" is, in reality, an obligation imposed upon taxpayers. This is a conception of rights at odds with that held by the founders and today's conservatives.

All those other "rights are HUMAN RIGHTS. The greatest liberal con job of our era. Human rights, human rights, human rights as if they are the be all and end all of human existence. They are nothing but a cheap and plastic copy of the real thing designed and manufactured to fool us into believing we have all kinds of rights while they strip us of the real ones. The ones that count, found in the bill of rights.

Human rights are a free lunch not freedom!

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