Things That are Not a Right.

The commonplace from the left with regard to health care is that it is, or should be, a "right" (usually with the accompanying boilerplate "In a country as rich as ours..."). The more sophisticated, such as President Obama, talk in terms of a designation between "negative" rights (free speech, religion, assembly, et al.) and "positive" rights (everything Franklin Roosevelt meant when he discussed "freedom from want"). To embrace the latter is understood as the evolved understanding.

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey encounters a group of super-articulate teens claiming just that. He explains why so-called "positive rights" aren't rights. (Hat tip: Insty)

As human beings, we want to see people succeed to the point where they can feed, clothe, and care for themselves independently, as that establishes true personal freedom.  However, none of us have the right to confiscate the services of a doctor or nurse without their consent, and without their ability to set a price for their time and expertise.  We don’t have the right to walk into a grocery story to demand apples when we’re hungry, either, although we should have access to the market without bias when we can properly compensate its owner for the goods.

I can speak freely on my own, without anyone opening my mouth or putting words in it. All my right to free speech requires is that someone else not silence me. The same is true for any other so-called "negative" rights. Health care, on the other hand, requires someone else's labor to provide. To claim it as a "right" is thus to claim the labor of another. It is a difference in degree from the medieval corvee, under which a lord could take the labor of the peasants on his land without compensating them.

During the Carolingian period, the kings of France began to grant income from royal estates to lords they desired to keep well-disposed toward the crown. Unlike feudal grants of land, which were passed down from generations, and upon which the lord took up residence and possession, these gifts, or benefices, were usually in monetary form only, keeping the actual land and economic activity performed thereupon under royal control. They could be revoked at royal whim, and so encouraged obedience to royal wishes.

Freedom of speech is a right. Free Health care is a benefice. And it's only a matter of time before that benefice is denied to those deemed politically unworthy.