Something that came up in the most recent debate, and which was quite scary, was that Barack Obama thinks health care is a right. 

I think this highlights a fundamental difference between the conservative and liberal lines of thinking.  This is very well articulated in an article we posted today from National Review, entitled ”What Is a Right and How Do We Know?”:

He said he thought it was a right. Well, if you accept that premise, I think you can ask some logical follow-up questions: Food is more important than health care. You die pretty quickly without food. Do we have a “right” to food in America? What about shelter? Do we have a “right” to housing? And if we do have a right to housing, what standard of housing do we have a right to? And if it is a right, due to all Americans, wouldn’t that mean that no one should have to accept any housing, or health care, which is inferior to anyone else’s… since it’s a right?

Do we have a right to be safe? Do we have a right to be comfortable? Do we have a right to wide-screen televisions? Where does this end?

That’s the first can of worms that we open with this line of thinking...where does it end?  But I think the biggest, and most important point we need to make here is this:

Constitutional rights protect us from things: intimidation, illegal search and seizure, self-incrimination, and so on. The revolutionary idea of our Founding Fathers was that people had a God-given right to live as they saw fit. Our constitutional rights protect us from the power of government.

But these new so-called “rights” are about the government — who the Founders saw as the enemy — giving us things: food, health care, education… And when we have a right to be given stuff that previously we had to work for, then there is no reason — none — to go and work for them. The goody bag has no bottom, except bankruptcy and ruin.

Does that ring a little familiar these days? Because isn’t the danger here that if you’re offered something for nothing… you’ll take it?

Only it’s not something for nothing. “Free” health-care costs us something precious, and no less precious for being invisible. Because there’s a word for someone who has their food, housing and care provided for them… for people who owe their existence to someone else.

And that word is “slaves.”

That’s exactly right, slaves.  And worse, we lose the will to fight and fend for ourselves.  When that happens we rely on the state for everything, and become Europe.  Who’ll defend us then?  Who will be the beacon of hope for the world?  Russia?

Read the whole thing here.