Pages

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Merwyn Greenlick A Tad Fuzzy On The Concept Of Rights

More government means less freedom.
Oregon State Representative Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, has attempted to make the provision of health care a right in the Oregon Constitution for more than five years. In this, his third legislative session in which he has introduced a proposal to make the state responsible to fund healthcare services to the uninsured, the resolution fell short of the number needed to pass. Greenlick said he will not try again. Let us hope we can take him at his word.

The measure called for amending the Oregon Constitution to declare:

"it is the obligation of the state to ensure that every legal resident of Oregon has access to effective, medically appropriate and affordable health care as a fundamental right."

Opponents said the measure would subject the state to an obligation it could not afford to deliver. Said Representative Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, the resolution was "a social experiment in constitutional socialism."
"Greenlick said he would be dead from lymphoma, now in remission, if he did not have access to affordable health care. That access should be a right, not a privilege, he said."
Why?
"Rights come from wrongs," he said. "What more egregious wrong can there be than depriving people the right to life simply because they do not have access to health care."
Rights come from wrongs? What kind of disturbance in one's thinking could result in such a non sequitur to be offered up as a proof?

Dr. Greenlick, this nation was founded on the principle that we as people are the possessors of rights that are inalienable. That is, the rights we are the possessors of cannot be transferred or given away. They are intrinsically ours as they come from God. We are not beholding to the state. When the state transgresses these rights it does wrong. An example of such a wrong would be your plan to take the funds from one person and give it for the benefit of another. This is called theft, and it is an immoral practice.

Let's clear up the confusion. Bigger is not better. Please join me in supporting Mike Bieker for State House District 33.

(Reposted From original post date of July 2nd, 2010)

5 comments:

  1. Moreover, since our rights (*) *are* inalienable (and since they come from God), they cannot be granted us by any government: our rights are prior to all governments.

    Now, a society may discover that it has not heretofore properly understood the inalienable rights of the individuals who comprise the society, but no society, and certainly no mere government, may invent a new right to bestow (upon some or upon all) its subjects; that is confusing ‘privilege’ for ‘right.’

    (*) our ‘rights’ -- the ones people mean when they use the word without a qualifier, or with universal qualifiers such as “human” or “inalienable.”

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Moreover, since our rights (*) *are* inalienable (and since they come from God), they cannot be granted us by any government: our rights are prior to all governments."

    Exactly right.

    That is the key assertion of The Declaration of Independence, and is what distinguishes us different from our forbears.

    ReplyDelete
  3. adam says - just found your blog - its great! keep up the good work, your children will grow to be experts, too.
    thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Adam, thanks for stopping by. We try to have a little fun here, and its tough to top the fun of unraveling some of the inane viewpoints of the well meaning left.

    What would have happened if Mitch had been a participant in a national healthcare program, instead of a private insured individual? Mitch thinks he would have received identical care, except that he wouldn't have had to pay the premiums for it. I'm pretty confident that his advanced age at time of diagnisis would have meant spending the resources to put his lymphoma in remission would be considered an unsupportable expenditure.

    Regardless, the treatment decision would have been out of Mitch's hands. That alone is such a scary proposition that I don't know how you could support it. Mitch just doesn't think so.

    That's not good enough for me.

    ReplyDelete