What Is A Right?

If there is one thing that can make my blood pressure go up and get me to ranting it is the abuse of the word "right."  That is, in the sense of what a human being is entitled to.  Nowhere is the leftist brainwashing of the government indoctrination system ("public school") and the media, more apparent than in this area.

Ever wonder why there are just three very intangible things listed as rights in the Declaration of Independence?  How many people are aware that in the Bill of Rights, which is a list of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, only one,  -- Ahem --,  **AHEM**   only one thing, or inanimate object is referred to as being a right?  Notice that the definition of said article is really only about it's use and not the object itself.  But more about that later.

What is a right?  What's the difference between a right and a privilege? How can we determine this?  When you think of something as being a right, what does that mean?  Isn't it something that you believe that you are owed merely for existing? To put it another way, maybe you think it is something you are entitled to in order to exist. To an undeveloped mind, it would make perfect sense that if you need something in order to survive, it MUST be a right, right? Um, not so fast, Sparky.

 In what should seem silly and outrageous to any thinking person, there are actually people who think that housing is a right. Some people actually think that food is a right.  Some even think that medical care is a right. Such people have only engaged in what Thomas Sowell calls "stage one" thinking.  They have not thought it out completely.   In my essay on Peterson Syndrome I start to delve into how this came about, and it goes to the lack of education via debate and logic.  In this case the most useful tool in the logic box is reductio ad absurdum.  This means reducing an argument to it's most logical base.  We exercise the concept of "if - then" until we exhaust it to the conclusion, until there is no more "then."

I started getting the idea about this from seeing Joe Huffman's "Jews in the attic" test.  He developed this test for deciding whether or not a law could be considered Constitutional.   To put it simply the way I understand it, imagine you are in Nazi controlled Europe and you are trying to rescue Jews from the holocaust.  If a law was passed that directly interfered with your ability to protect those Jews or try to get them to safety, the law fails the test.  Go study it for yourself, and think about having to be in such positions. It may be coming sooner than you think.

Maybe you've seen the TV show "Survivor."  This was another piece of the puzzle for developing my rights test.  It didn't take long for me to grow disgusted with the show.  Survivor was a misnomer. However, the show did teach me a lot about human behavior.  "Reality" TV it was not.  The producers of the show manipulated everything, all in the effort to create tension, controversy and ultimately, ratings.  Let's really exercise our minds by thinking about what would happen if a small group of people were suddenly thrust into a genuine survival situation.  Plane crash in a remote area of South America or Canada.  Shipwrecked on a remote island.  Doesn't matter.  But there is no government, no rules, no infrastructure, no electricity, no shelter.  Doesn't matter if there are three of you or thirty of you.  All that matters now is survival.

This is where you had better hope and pray that the strong male(s) in the group have character and conscience, otherwise you'd better have enough survival skills to move out on your own and do your best. That goes double if you are female.

Now, think about what rights you have.  Do you have a right to food? Only if you hunt it down and kill it, or find it and dig it up or collect it. That applies to you as an individual or a group.  Do you have a right to warmth?  Only if you can figure out how to start a fire and maintain it.  The wood will not gather itself.  Do you have a right to shelter?  Only if you want to figure out how to build it or find a cave.  Do you have a right to a job?  Are you starting to see the picture here?

Let's say the group of "survivors" is about 20 or so in size.  It is a fairly diverse group when it comes to employment, vocation, education, etc. Why, there is even a physician in the mix. Does that mean you have a right to medical care?  There is no hospital, no beds, no medical equipment.  Only the knowledge that exists in that well-trained brain of that lady who spent the better part of her life, giving up any "life" as most people know it to acquire the knowledge she needed to be called "doctor."  But now, your little group is in a situation where everybody has to work hard to do just the most basic things to gather scarce food and water and try to maintain warmth and create shelter.  What about her rights?  Are you going to force her, just because of her knowledge, to have to care for anyone in the group who needs medical attention?  Any time that she sacrifices for that, instead of gathering or hunting or working on the shelter or gathering wood, takes away from the benefits of the whole group, let alone herself.  How are you going to compensate her?

Of course it is beneficial if everyone works together and finds a way to divide the labor and make the best use of everyone's skills. But it has to be on a voluntary basis.  Respect for each person's individual rights would be imperative. The cold, hard truth that each person would have to come to grips with, is that a right is only something that does not require any other person to have to sacrifice any of his own rights.

Private property has to be a fundamental right in order for any society to thrive.  That which you work to earn has to be respected by all the members of a community. This right was understood well by the founding fathers. It is understood from the main body of the Constitution.  It went all the way back to the Magna Carta, and had long been a part of English common law.

The bottom line is this: Nothing that requires that another person give up involuntarily, a part of his life, either in actual time or property earned, can be considered a right by someone else.  Go think on that.  We are quickly approaching a time in history when the looters are going to have to get their own hands dirty doing the actual looting and risk the consequences, rather than electing henchmen to use the power of government to do it for them.

Bill Whittle Explains It Well

Peterson Syndrome II

The first installment of this essay can be found here.

From my studies on language, the government welfare systems, politics, and history, I find that people are pretty much like electricity and water; they take the path of least resistance and they seek their level.  Both of these things are a corollary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Both of these conditions have never changed in the course of human history.  The founders of the U.S. of A. understood this.  Mankind is not inherently good. Therefore, he needs to be trained in the ways of goodness. The Left wants to believe that mankind is inherently good and because they want it to be so, therefore it must be so. Both cannot be correct.  The proof of this can be found every time one ventures out into the community.  You can easily find one example of the Leftist style of parenting.  It is often hard to find examples of conservative styles of parenting, especially if you live in a large, metropolitan area.

You are in the store, and you can hear the kid wailing, sassing back, just being an all around little jerk in an effort to get his way (girls too).  The reason this is happening is because the parent sees little Johnny or Susie as an adult with all the rights and privileges that they themselves have. Johnny must be negotiated with. Johnny deserves to know that mommy can't afford to buy him that toy. Never mind that he doesn't contribute anything to household income or even know how to balance a checkbook.  The word "No" to Johnny simply means that he hasn't negotiated long enough or used severe enough tactics. This kid has been reared to date under the assumption that Left wing ideas about human nature are true, only to prove that such ideas are nonsense.  This kid has not the slightest inkling of concern over what is good for his family, his mother, or anyone around him.  He wants what he wants and is determined to push the envelope as far as he can to get it.

Once in a great while, you come across a family, often there are two or more children (that's the first clue, and there's a reason for it) where the children are quiet, respectful, and observant.  The older one's might even be helping to tend to the younger ones.  These are kids who have been trained under the assumption that the training is necessary.  Lest there be a misunderstanding, I'm not talking about strict discipline that borders on abuse.  I'm simply talking about loving discipline that helps the child develop into a loving, caring adult.  The conservative understanding of human nature and the subsequent training that results from it, produces people who function well in a society as self-sufficient and contributing to the overall good.  The leftist philosophy of human nature is that of leaving the garden to grow completely untended so that it produces nothing of any value, and we all end up starving.  The only thing that keeps the latter scenario from happening quickly is the reality of human nature that creates the speed bumps on the way to hell.  We just experienced such a kind of speed bump in the 2010 elections, or as P.J. O'Rourke said, "more like a restraining order."

What does this have to do with Peterson Syndrome?  Well, in thinking long about it (and I intend to think more, and refine my thoughts on this), Peterson Syndrome is something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, in that it is induced by outside factors, rather than being something innately organic.  It is my opinion that it is like brainwashing.  Albeit slow and subtle and accomplished by what I would call a "Cattle Conspiracy."  Once a Cattle Conspiracy has fully developed, reality becomes a very inconvenient truth.  This is what we see happening in France and Greece as of this post.  It does not matter that there is no more money to allow government union workers to retire at 55 and continue to collect taxpayer money in the form of pensions. They will riot in the streets until either the government sprinkles more magic pixie dust on the treasury to produce the money, or the government sends in troops to violently squash the rebellion.  This is the fruit of Peterson Syndrome on a large scale.  You could take a classroom full of Greek or French union workers, or for that matter, General Motors union workers and set them all down with charts and graphs and give them a crash course in basic economics and you would be lucky if one or two out of 50 understood that the game was rigged for disaster from the start.  It doesn't matter that the laws of economics have no feelings for their circumstances. They were promised something. Logic and facts be damned. "I have my RIGHTS!"  These people don't even understand the rules that determine whether or not something can or cannot be a "right."  Somebody said  "_____" was a right, and they believe it, and that settles it.  Look for a forthcoming essay on what constitutes a right.

Peterson Syndrome was coined by Joe Huffman about Joan Peterson and her irrational and illogical perception of inanimate firearms and human nature.  I think this became easier for us conservatives to analyze because the firearms issue has statistics that are far less complex for understanding than economics, while at the same time having far more emotional aspects that paint the picture with much more vivid colors.

In the next installment, I'm going to try to show why the promoters of the Peterson Syndrome do what they do.  After that, I hope to delve into their methods.