HEALTH--NOT A HUMAN RIGHT

                  Health care is not a human right.  Neither is clothing, housing, food, or education.

                  When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence he carefully chose three God-given rights:  life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.  To be sure, in his colonial mind he wasn't thinking about slaves when he wrote; he was thinking about freedmen.  Society has progressed a lot since then and in our modern thinking, we would of course extend this right to all people, not just freedmen.

                  The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was good enough for the Declaration, but not good enough for governance.  As a result, some rights were added in the initial Bill of Rights to further clarify what those initial rights meant.  The right to worship, assemble, speak, arming ourselves, and to be secure within our persons and things all became universal rights.  Later, the right to vote, to drink alcohol and other things were added as the society progressed. 

                  The critical thing about all these rights is that they have no inherent cost on anybody else.  In order for me to live, you don't have to die, pay, or help.  In order for me to speak, you don't have to stop talking. None of these rights requires anybody else to do or pay anything; that is why they are considered human rights. 

                  You cannot have an inherent human right that costs someone else anything.  The two are completely and absolutely philosophically incompatible.  If your human right requires me to pay something or do something (besides not keeping you from it) then it is a social construct, a social mandate, not a human right bestowed on every human from the womb and regardless of social norms.

                  This is why human rights are sacred and special.  I'll never forget speaking on the steps of parliament in Australia at a food choice rally, with police hovering nearby, and being reminded by the locals:  "remember, we have no right to speak here."  Wow.

`               When we extend human rights to things that cost others, we cheapen the real ones and obfuscate their philosophical foundation.  If your right requires me to do something, then it enslaves me to your requirement.  Then I'm deprived of a much more basic human right, which is the right not to be enslaved by you.  

                  This is such a simple concept, and yet many people conflate a social charity with basic human rights.  If a culture wants to guarantee health care as a social charity, that's fine, but never, please never, elevate it to a human right.  This is why life, liberty, and the pursuit (notice, not the guarantee) of happiness are special.  They can, and should be, enjoyed by everyone without any sacrifice on the part of anyone else.  

                  A tribe discovered by missionaries deep in the jungles of the Amazon heard the gospel and many came to Christ.  The missionaries, serviced by their mission's small Cessna airplane, brought medical supplies into this primitive enclave.  Gradually the missionaries created an alphabet and gave them a written language, plus pencils and paper.  The tribe still ate monkeys and snakes and lived out of the river (bathing, fish) but gradually learned about some of the thing available outside their village.  

                  One day a child became extremely sick.  The tribe was used to losing children from time to time, as well as the elderly, like any people group would.  But the missionaries said this particular illness was treatable if they took the child to a hospital on the airplane.  The village adults convened for a meeting to discuss this new possibility.  It would require all the money the village could put together to save this child, and the people decided it was better to buy some pipe for clean water and do some other things rather than spend all their money trying to save one child's life.  And the parents were fine with that, to advance the whole village rather than spend their scarce money to save one person.

                  It's a heartrending story, but I think illustrates a level of wisdom and contemplation worth considering.  In American culture, more than 70 percent of all medical care is spent to extend life 6 months.  Why?  Let it go.  I've instructed my family to not resuscitate me if I have a heart attack.  Let me go.  Why burden them and society to extend my life?  Let it go.               

                  When Patrick Henry declared "give me liberty or give me death" he wasn't blowing smoke.  He recognized there are things worse than dying, and things worth dying for. 

                  Can you think of anything worse than dying, or not being treated for a medical condition?