Will on "Conservative"

This is a definition of "conservative" I could get with, were it possible, since most conservatives are not. Part of the failure of this brand of conservatism is the loss generally in the culture/world of the meaning of "right", in that one can never have a right to what another creates or provides or the word has no meaning.

"“American conservatives are the custodians of the classical liberal tradition.” The core of conservatism is a commitment to the constitutional arrangements of the American founding, particularly the separation of powers, the preeminence of the legislative branch, and the independence of the judiciary. Further, classical liberalism acknowledges and protects a sacred space for the individual, who by nature possesses fundamental rights -- rights not up for barter."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/05/the_sense_and_sensibility_of_george_will_141400.html

What Is A Right?

According to The New York Times, a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, involving a challenge to Obamacare's requirement that businesses pay for their employees' contraceptives, "pits religious liberty against women's rights." Similarly, last month's controversy over an Arizona bill aimed at protecting business owners from being forced to treat homosexual and heterosexual couples alike was widely perceived as a conflict between religious liberty and gay rights.
Both of these debates are more accurately described as clashes between real rights and fake rights. To put it more politely, they pit negative liberty, which requires freedom from external restraint, against positive liberty, which imposes demands on other people's resources. Under the latter vision, giving freedom to one person requires taking it away from another.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/26/free-birth-control-and-unfree-photograph

What Is A Right?

"Collective bargaining rights" - didn't see that one in the constitution.  "Workers" have many issues, but the legal power to use force against an employer is the least of them.  

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176953/workers-are-under-attack-states#

The Right of the People

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty. It is specifically insulated from governmental interference by the Constitution and has historically been the linchpin of resistance to tyranny. And yet, the progressives in both political parties stand ready to use the coercive power of the government to interfere with the exercise of that right by law-abiding persons because of the gross abuse of that right by some crazies in our midst."
http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/10/guns-and-freedom

I Have A Right To Your Life

Translation: FDR thought that we all have a right to stuff that is not
ours. When a word like "right" is contorted so, it has an entirely
different meaning, one that can only be interpreted and dictated by
tyrants.

Can I have a right to a doctor's time and care? Do I have a right to
transportation built by others? Do I have a right to fuel or
electricity which many thousands have toiled to create?

What drivel. It stuns me that anyone with an IQ above 50 can think this
way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-fdr-and-the
-fight-to-defend-our-freedom/2012/11/05/c50c147e-2759-11e2-b2a0-ae18d615
9439_story.html

What Is A Right?

For example, many Americans believe that our rights derive from God or from the very nature of being human. As Paul Ryan put it in a discussion of Obamacare this month, folks of his political persuasion don't believe that the people have the power to make up new rights; rights come from God and nature. These same Americans also generally believe that our rights are those delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, including a non-infringeable individual right to bear arms. And yet, clearly, people in most law-governed democracies other than the United States, countries like Britain, Canada, France, Israel, the Netherlands and Japan, do not have an individual right to bear arms. How, then, can the right to bear arms as enshrined in the constitution derive from God, or from the very nature of being human? Is this a special sort of right, one that can be created by the people via government if they so choose? If so, then what stops the people, through their government, from creating other sorts of new rights, like a right to education, or a right to health insurance?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/07/gun-control?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709


Fundamental misunderstandings of rights about.  I can't have a right to health care because that requires money and time and expertise - I can't have the right to the money that is yours, the time that is a doctor's, or the expertise of medical professionals.  


The "right" to bear arms is quite simply an acknowledgement that the state exists to guarantee rights, and the People being armed is the primary way the People have to ensure that it does not step outside of that role.  Certainly, there's no one or no state entity which is entitled to remove a thing from me which I own.  The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution because everyone who can think knows - the first step to enslaving a group is disarming them.  


The "right" to education is the same as saying you have a right to someone else's money and time.  The right to bear arms is the simple re-expression of the perspective that the state exists to serve the individual, not vice versa.  


This, folks, should be child's play.

Joke Becomes Reality

A man of twenty-one with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute. Why not? His social worker says sex is a “human right” and that his client, being a virgin, is entitled to the support of the state in claiming said right. Fortunately, a £520 million program was set up by Her Majesty’s Government to “empower those with disabilities.”
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Dependence-Day-6753

I've been joking with friends about this for months, but didn't think I'd see it come to fruition so fast!  But really, if we're going to use the coercive force of the state to take money from the subjects and apply that money with the benefit of governmental wisdom to alleviate suffering - what greater reduction in suffering could there be than to 'empower' young men to avoid the suffering of sexual deprivation!?! 

Steyn's a genius, if a bit too enamored of using words like 'we' when he means 'the political class with the consent of those who are mesmerized by them'.  But this piece covers a lot of ground and is worth reading more than once, if one can hold off the urge to feel as depressed about things as Steyn seems to.

Can I Have A Right To Your Life Energy?

Is Basic Health Care a ‘Right’?

At some point, if you claim health care to be a right, you are asserting that you and I are entitled to the work from someone else.  That's not right.