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a right is what the legal system in place calls rights.
each assignment of that status is a technical (in the sense of writing it into law) and political question.
trying to make some distinction on principle between "rights that cost me money" and "rights that don't cost me money" says nothing about rights--only something about your aesthetic preferences.
in other words, it says nothing about anything beyond what you like and what you dont. so it works on the same register as statements concerning your preferences or chunky as over against smooth peanut butter.
rights pertain to a legal subject, a construction of persons that is basically the sum of legal statements which give attributes to a social individual.
so one line of argument that could happen here concerns the universal declaration of human rights that smeth brought up above. once the united states signed that document, effectively it adopted that construction of legal subjects as binding. thanks largely to the john birch society wing of the contemporary right, there's a paranoia about the un abroad in the land (black helicopters anyone?)...this coupled with years of routine ignoring of such conventions, mostly in the name of conservative-style nation-states uber alles thinking, have resulted in the right not having quite caught up with reality. but it seems to me that the fact that the us signed that declaration means that it accepted this notion of human rights and accepted the construction of a legal subject that follows from it. so i don't see how universal health care is not already obligatory, and even less any possible basis from the right for opposing it.
even on pragmatic grounds i don't see it. this is a capitalist system. one of the primary functions of such a system is the reproduction of the labor pool. keeping more people healthy--and socializing the costs of doing it--would seem to me to make sense for bidness. hell, even insurance companies have such an interest.
i see no arguments against universal health care being good for bidness, so it makes no sense to me that the same folk who carry water for the existing corporate sector in political terms to oppose it.
it seems that the main arguments come from some curious position rooted in a fantasy 18th century world of yeomen farmers and no indoor plumbing and no electricity.
the dunedan above outlined a position that's internally consistent, but i'm baffled as to why it is compelling given that we're in the modern capitalist world, like it or not. the argument is which version of that system is more desirable, what ends would make it more desirable. so which variant of the existing system do we collectively want. stuff about individual rights drawn on this 18th century yeoman farmer no cars no internet business are beside the point.
that said, i can see why conservatives would not want to concede this point, though--once you do, you concede the whole argument against universal access to basic health care.
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o and vigiliante: fact is that neither you nor anyone else has the faintest idea what was running through the minds of the framers of the constitution. the whole original intent thing is goofy. in this context, it actively obstructs a coherent discussion.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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