A popular issue to hedge upon for young conservatives like myself is universal healthcare. You can be against the nanny state and unnecessary social programs all you like, but not wanting to win the international healthcare competition that’s apparently going on makes you uncivilized and classist. See, if we can hold our heads up in the face of the French, America has to win at everything- not just “highest number of motocross tracks per square mile” and “most bitching national bird,” but also “most coffee shops with free wi-fi” and “best sushi restaurants.” Apparently you would think “most aircraft carriers” and “98% of the human beings on earth would kill to be born here” make us win at being a country on their own, but I digress. My point is that best healthcare is not a ranking that I think a government is responsible for aspiring to, and that the fact that Sweden has beaten us in something probably means that that something is pretty lame. “But Liberty,” my hippie roommates are often heard to ask, “don’t you think that life is sacred? Don’t you think that even poor people deserve healthcare?”
Well, it’s a valid question, and one I’m not going to mock here (though I regret to say I have in the past). Important to remember is that no one is against healthcare- disregarding social darwinists and Christian Scientists and… let’s move on- much in the same way that no one is against puppies. I’m not particularly opposed to America having puppies, but I am opposed to having a cut of my paycheck go towards purchasing puppies for people who can’t afford them.
But healthcare isn’t puppies. The issue here is whether or not people have positive rights: the right to ________, not merely the right to be free from __________. Back in the Founding Fathers’ day, the right to __________ would have seemed absurd. The right to be free from economic oppression and tyranny seemed pretty obvious, as did the right to be free from being bayonetted by a pissy Brit. The right to, say, a certain amount of money per year isn’t what one could call a natural right, and thus isn’t one I think other people ought to be coerced into backing with their money.
But that argument doesn’t entirely solve our problem, either. While it seems as if, say, the right to a certain sum of money or a certain quality of life would be a categorically positive right, the right to life (of “life and liberty”) fame is a little bit trickier to define. Do I have the right not to be killed? Sure. Do I have the right to unpolluted natural resources and foodstuffs? Probably- certainly if I was mislead into believing that my natural resources and/or foodstuffs weren’t polluted, or the natural resources and/or foodstuffs were either my personal property or in the public domain.
But let’s take cancer for example. We have no idea what causes it in a particular case: we can identify risk factors, but rarely anything else. Maybe it was Uncle Bob’s pack-a-day habit that gave him lung cancer, and maybe it was the ‘ol coal mine up on the mountain. Either it was Uncle Bob’s fault or it wasn’t that he got cancer, but since he can’t afford healthcare, who’s left holding the ball? People who give a damn if Uncle Bob lives or dies, the man himself, the U.S. of A. or all three?
Let’s try not thinking about the U.S. as an individual entity, as I rarely think it’s appropriate except in foreign policy situation. Let’s think of it as a collection of three people- me, Uncle Bob, and Uncle Bob’s niece Jessica. I don’t know Bob or Jess, though I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people, and it doesn’t matter one whit to me whether Bob lives or dies. People die all the time- they die in Rwanda, in China, and in Detroit, and all three places are equally irrelevant to me. Just because Bob and I happen to have the same kind of passport doesn’t mean I’m inherently more responsible for protecting his life, as the only appeal you can make to the inherent value of life is a moral one- one that transcends states and laws and taxes.
See, a social contract is a contract entered into for the purposes of protection; in our case, protection from English troops and taxes and whoever else might want to mess with us for whatever reason. It is utterly outside my power to protect Bob from his own decisions and God’s whimsy, and as such I shouldn’t be responsible for the effects of either of them. If Jess chooses to support her Uncle, it’s merely because she loves him and doesn’t want him to die- I have neither of those compunctions, and if for some reason I did, I’d be glad to volunteer my money and time for a cause I believed in. But I shouldn’t be coerced into volunteering my money and time for a cause I couldn’t care less and probably don’t even know about, no matter how morally compelling it may or may not be, because you can’t legislate morality. Social contracts- republican governments- are utilitarian. If the government has the right to tell me how responsible I should feel and in fact become for Uncle Bob, they’ve also got the right to decide that I can’t marry a girl, and everyone thinks that’s pretty absurd.
