Understand difference between privilege, right

[BrianSullivan]

Understand difference between privilege, right

I ask readers to understand the difference between a privilege and a right. Currently, the tendency to confuse the two has run amok and is making it difficult to think clearly about issues like the state Council on Affordable Housing and the new federal health care programs.

Here are some true rights: No laws may interfere with the free exercise of religion, or cause the establishment of a state religion, or restrict freedom of speech in the public square, or freedom of the press, or freedom to assemble peacefully; no laws may violate the security of persons, houses, documents, or other personal possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, or cause someone to be tried twice for the same offense.

Here are some alleged rights I keep hearing about: right to have access to health care, right to obtain affordable housing, right to obtain an affordable education, right to have plenty of clean water and nutritious food.

These are privileges, not rights. Unlike the rights developed and delineated by the thoughtful Founders to guard against the tyranny of majorities, this second list is simply plucked out of thin air according to the whims of the time. They are all laudable things and there is no doubt that everyone would like to have them and I hope everyone in the world gets them.

But each of these rights requires someone else to do work to provide you with the right. The negative rights in the first list restrict others from interfering with your basic inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The second list can be thought of as positive rights, the right to get material things that you did not have before, and that someone else must create to give you.

These fake rights require someone to go to school and learn their trade, write and print a textbook, build a hospital, design a medical device, build a house, dig a well, install a septic system, finance, design, and build the infrastructure for a sewage treatment plant, plow soil, sow seeds, run irrigation channels, and on and on. In West Africa no one does the work and the people live in squalor. This is the norm for most of the world, believe it or not.

In other countries, like Cuba and Venezuela, these “rights” are obtained by forced labor and confiscations. In this country people do the work, voluntarily, and we should consider it a privilege and be grateful.

The nomenclature is important because rights are obligations that people expect a government to protect and implement directly through laws and regulations. They are not debatable. By understanding that things like affordable housing are privileges, we can have a debate: Should there be a government program to regulate it? Should we force builders to provide it? Should we use tax dollars or rely on market forces?

I urge readers to be wary of politicians and others who childishly insist that this or that thing is a right. This is pure demagoguery that is designed to shut down debate and, ultimately, to create expensive and damaging bureaucracies.
Leon Goudikian
Freehold Borough

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2010-04-07/Letters/Understand_difference_between_privilege_right.html

[BrianSullivan]

Apr 9, 2010 19:39:09 GMT -5 BrianSullivan said:

Understand difference between privilege, right

I ask readers to understand the difference between a privilege and a right. Currently, the tendency to confuse the two has run amok and is making it difficult to think clearly about issues like the state Council on Affordable Housing and the new federal health care programs.

Here are some true rights: No laws may interfere with the free exercise of religion, or cause the establishment of a state religion, or restrict freedom of speech in the public square, or freedom of the press, or freedom to assemble peacefully; no laws may violate the security of persons, houses, documents, or other personal possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, or cause someone to be tried twice for the same offense.

Here are some alleged rights I keep hearing about: right to have access to health care, right to obtain affordable housing, right to obtain an affordable education, right to have plenty of clean water and nutritious food.

These are privileges, not rights. Unlike the rights developed and delineated by the thoughtful Founders to guard against the tyranny of majorities, this second list is simply plucked out of thin air according to the whims of the time. They are all laudable things and there is no doubt that everyone would like to have them and I hope everyone in the world gets them.

But each of these rights requires someone else to do work to provide you with the right. The negative rights in the first list restrict others from interfering with your basic inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The second list can be thought of as positive rights, the right to get material things that you did not have before, and that someone else must create to give you.

These fake rights require someone to go to school and learn their trade, write and print a textbook, build a hospital, design a medical device, build a house, dig a well, install a septic system, finance, design, and build the infrastructure for a sewage treatment plant, plow soil, sow seeds, run irrigation channels, and on and on. In West Africa no one does the work and the people live in squalor. This is the norm for most of the world, believe it or not.

In other countries, like Cuba and Venezuela, these “rights” are obtained by forced labor and confiscations. In this country people do the work, voluntarily, and we should consider it a privilege and be grateful.

The nomenclature is important because rights are obligations that people expect a government to protect and implement directly through laws and regulations. They are not debatable. By understanding that things like affordable housing are privileges, we can have a debate: Should there be a government program to regulate it? Should we force builders to provide it? Should we use tax dollars or rely on market forces?

I urge readers to be wary of politicians and others who childishly insist that this or that thing is a right. This is pure demagoguery that is designed to shut down debate and, ultimately, to create expensive and damaging bureaucracies.
Leon Goudikian
Freehold Borough

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2010-04-07/Letters/Understand_difference_between_privilege_right.html

I just really liked this letter from a fellow borough-ite. He appears to be one more with common sense.

[adefonzo]

This letter is perfect. It has been mentioned on here, and certainly in conversations we have all had, but this letter sums it all up perfectly.

The reason why the country is so divided these days is due in large part to the confusion over rights vs. privileges. Those who believe things such as Health Insurance and affordable housing are rights are passionate to a point of not wanting to continue with a debate, because they feel there is none. "It is my right, give it to me."

You can not start a debate until people are willing to open their minds to the fact that the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and all the work of our founding fathers was not done to ensure that everyone who lives in America gets whatever they feel they are entitled to.

There used to be a clear understanding that "The American Dream" was being able to live a comfortable life, and provide for your children with the opportunity for a better life than the one you had, and that was achievable by anyone who was willing to do the work required to reach that goal.

Now, we've become a society that, first of all, wants for too much. We've gotten to the point where a "comfortable life" means everyone in the 3000+ square foot house having their own car, their own flat screen television, their own computers, video gaming systems, vacations all around the world, designer clothes, iPhones, and so on and so on. What's worse, though, is the feeling nowadays that we don't have to really work for these things, we can simply get them through credit, knowing the right people, cheating the system, or just demanding it from government.

There is another disparity that I have often heard mentioned by Dennis Miller which is consistent with this line of thought. I agree with Dennis Miller when he says that I have no problem helping the helpless, but I am sick and tired of helping the hopeless. There is certainly a portion of society in America, and around the world that is unable, for a number of real, legitimate reasons, to pick themselves up and make their lives sustainable. Ironically, it is often those people who you do not hear from at rallies crying for more government programs and aid. Why? Because these truly "helpless" people are often to busy trying to scratch out a living any way that they can. I have come across a number of "helpless" people both back home, and now abroad, and I can honestly say that there is a level of pride amongst those people. A stubbornness that they feel they are not "helpless" and they will find a way to claw out of the hole they are in. These are the people who deserve our attention and our help.

But sadly, the majority of the people in our country who are on government programs fall into the "hopeless" category. They have gotten so used to a life supported by the government that they don't even want to contemplate having to go out and make it on their own. And believe me...these folks are just as eager to get that big screen tv, the iPhone, the Playstations, the new cars and so on and so on...but they're letting Uncle Sam float the bill...which means the taxpayers of our country. These are the people who need to be cut off from the government nipple and shoved back out, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the real world.

But....as Rich mentioned in another thread...President Obama, and liberal politicians for years and years now, have nurtured that portion of the population. They have continued to instill in them a feeling of "the government owes you these things, it is your right to have them" in order to keep these folks coming out to the polls in order to re-elect them into office over and over again.

It's the same argument that I have had about the so called illegal immigrant support groups (LLA, Casa Freehold, etc). These organizations, along with the liberal left of politics, has no intention of actually helping the people they profess to be championing. There is no desire on their part to see these folks lifted up and put on a course where they can be self supportive...because if that were to happen...what happens to the people who were "looking out for them" and "ensuring they get a fair deal"?? Their services will no longer be needed, and the spotlight will no longer be shining on them. So the goal, instead, is to keep that population hungry enough, and aggravated enough, and loud enough to keep the pressure on, and to keep the votes coming in.

It angers me, it gets my blood boiling, but in the end, it's really just sad...downright tragic. There are times when I look at my country and I am ashamed of what it has become. There are times when I wonder what the reaction would truly be of a John Adams, a Thomas Jefferson, a George Washington, or a Benjamin Franklin...men who literally put their lives in jeopardy to create a country where the governing body would take a back seat to individual freedoms. Would they be proud of what this grand experiment has become? Or would they be ashamed?

[adefonzo]

Just some additional food for thought..........


"I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation's."
- James Madison

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty . . . is finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People."
- George Washington

"No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of patriotism. . . .Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams


This is one of my favorites...

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES."
- Patrick Henry

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue."
- Samuel Adams

[richardkelsey]

Apr 9, 2010 19:39:09 GMT -5 BrianSullivan said:

Understand difference between privilege, right

I ask readers to understand the difference between a privilege and a right. Currently, the tendency to confuse the two has run amok and is making it difficult to think clearly about issues like the state Council on Affordable Housing and the new federal health care programs.

Here are some true rights: No laws may interfere with the free exercise of religion, or cause the establishment of a state religion, or restrict freedom of speech in the public square, or freedom of the press, or freedom to assemble peacefully; no laws may violate the security of persons, houses, documents, or other personal possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, or cause someone to be tried twice for the same offense.

Here are some alleged rights I keep hearing about: right to have access to health care, right to obtain affordable housing, right to obtain an affordable education, right to have plenty of clean water and nutritious food.

These are privileges, not rights. Unlike the rights developed and delineated by the thoughtful Founders to guard against the tyranny of majorities, this second list is simply plucked out of thin air according to the whims of the time. They are all laudable things and there is no doubt that everyone would like to have them and I hope everyone in the world gets them.

But each of these rights requires someone else to do work to provide you with the right. The negative rights in the first list restrict others from interfering with your basic inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The second list can be thought of as positive rights, the right to get material things that you did not have before, and that someone else must create to give you.

These fake rights require someone to go to school and learn their trade, write and print a textbook, build a hospital, design a medical device, build a house, dig a well, install a septic system, finance, design, and build the infrastructure for a sewage treatment plant, plow soil, sow seeds, run irrigation channels, and on and on. In West Africa no one does the work and the people live in squalor. This is the norm for most of the world, believe it or not.

In other countries, like Cuba and Venezuela, these “rights” are obtained by forced labor and confiscations. In this country people do the work, voluntarily, and we should consider it a privilege and be grateful.

The nomenclature is important because rights are obligations that people expect a government to protect and implement directly through laws and regulations. They are not debatable. By understanding that things like affordable housing are privileges, we can have a debate: Should there be a government program to regulate it? Should we force builders to provide it? Should we use tax dollars or rely on market forces?

I urge readers to be wary of politicians and others who childishly insist that this or that thing is a right. This is pure demagoguery that is designed to shut down debate and, ultimately, to create expensive and damaging bureaucracies.
Leon Goudikian
Freehold Borough

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2010-04-07/Letters/Understand_difference_between_privilege_right.html

perfect