Whenever someone uses the term “slavery,” you can almost hear Lefties’ heads exploding–they get so apopaleptic. Immediately, they go into a frenzy, break open their Alinsky manuals, and attempt to ridicule the person making the point.

An example of this occurred just yesterday, when Sen. Rand Paul [R-KY] stated that those who believe that health care is a “right” believe in slavery. Yep. He used the dreaded ‘S’ word and, predictably, the whacky Left went bonkers.

Of course, his comments come on the heels of Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-VT] introducing a bill in the Senate for socialized medicine.

The fact of the matter is, and regardless how the Left wants to insipidly spin it, Rand Paul’s right. It is not an abstraction. It is the full realization of the principle the Left espouses when they claim there is a “right” to someone else’s labor.

Here is what Paul stated:

“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me,” Paul said recently in a Senate subcommittee hearing.

“It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses,” Paul said, adding that there is “an implied use of force.”

“If I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to healthcare, you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be,” Paul said.

In hearing Paul’s argument, it is pretty clear that his definition of rights is that of individual rights, not collective rights, as defined here:

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

When Rand Paul speaks of the Left’s use of the term “right” to healthcare, he is speaking about a concept where one man (or society) has the “right” to demand the labor of another. It is a collectivist argument and Paul is right to frame it as such, regardless of whether people cringe over his usage of the “S” word.

Paul is not alone in his beliefs either, as illustrated here:

The true nature of rights — the type of rights the Founding Fathers believed in — involved the right of people to pursue such things as health care, education, clothing, and food and that government cannot legitimately interfere with their ability to do so.

Thus, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as described in the Declaration of Independence, doesn’t mean that someone else is forced to provide you with the means to sustain or improve your life. It means that government cannot enact laws, rules, or regulations that interfere with or infringe upon your right to pursue such things.

There is no difference whether the collectivist is demanding his “right” to health care, a job, a house, or high speed internet–all of these are “rights,” according to today’s Left.

Ironically, for all the Left’s recent clamoring over the “right” of government workers to collectively bargain, they apparently do not see the hypocrisy in their demanding an entire profession to be under the yoke of governmental control.

Unfortunately, today, we have a society where it has become acceptable for the Left to demand as its “right” the labors of an individual* without well-deserved repudiation. However, that does not make it right.

Rand Paul is right. Health care is not a “right.”

HT: Erick Brockway
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

X-posted.