I was recently made aware that the new Michael Moore movie Capitalism: A Love Story closes with a list of “rights” as stated by the fascist Franklin Delano Roosevelt, following:
- The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
- The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
- The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
- The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
- The right of every family to a decent home;
- The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
- The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
- and the right to a good education.
Roosevelt called this his “Second Bill of Rights” or an “Economic Bill of Rights.”
This is how the state corrupts the morality of the individuals in society – by twisting the definition of vital concepts – in this case, the very concept of rights. This is how politicians want you to think of rights, and this is how we were taught to think about rights in thirteen-plus years of government indoctrination camp.
It gets very confusing defining what rights are under this system of positive rights, because every human desire can be turned into a “right” without consideration of how these “rights” should be obtained.
We can clear the confusion with a few simple precepts: First, rights are negative, meaning that you have the right to not have your rights interfered with. You have the right to your life, liberty, and property. You do not have the right to infringe on anyone else’s life, liberty, or property – nor do they have the right to infringe on yours.
If this isn’t immediately clear, apply this idea: You do not have the “right” to anything that someone else must provide for you.
If what you call a “right” must be provided by someone else, i.e someone else must provide their property, their labor, their time to give you your right, then you are denying another individual their right to determine how their property, their labor, or their time will be utilized and for what purposes.
Re-read FDRs list, and think about how many of the supposed “rights” of an individual would have to be provided by another individual. Apropos to today’s debate: “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”
In order for you to have “adequate medical care” someone must provide it for you. A health care practitioner is an individual with their own rights, including the right to determine how they will employ their labor. To force this individual to care for you because you have the “right” to their services is to make them your slave. To force others to pay for your health care through the form of theft known as taxation is to violate their property rights – their right to choose how their money will be spent.
In a free society, you have the right to pursue most of these things, you just don’t have the right to have them.
The saddest part of the story (as told by Michael Covel) is that:
As FDR concluded and the film ended, I was shocked at the reaction. The theater of 400-plus spectators stood and cheered wildly at FDR’s 1944 proposal.
Without a valid moral and ethical understanding of rights, the masses are easily led to believe that the state can provide them with everything they can dream of, and to not consider that they are initiating violence against their fellow man in the pursuit of more “rights.”