Knee Jerks and Human Rights

Representative John Conyers, proving rather deftly that he can be as much of an idiot as his wife Monica, has declared that he will propose a constitutional amendment declaring health care a right. The difference is, her idiocy was in the realm of criminal activity while his activity roams the halls of Congress. But to loosely paraphrase the writer Mark Twain, perhaps I repeat myself.

We have in this nation muddied the definitions between what is and is not a right. We have allowed politicians to set the terms of debate for us. What they have given us is a formula for disaster, for complete and utter chaos in the long run.

We have a right to pursue a job, to obtain health care, and to find housing, for example. But notice that our right is in pursuing these things. Not that we don't need jobs and medical care and homes; but when we start talking about what we need and then calling our needs rights in themselves, we tread on dangerous and uncertain ground.

An interesting and to the point story about my wife will hopefully illustrate my thesis. She deserves the recognition, given the amount of time I've joked about her.

While we were students at the University of Detroit, she attended a speech by Marc Stepp, at the time a UAW leader. He made the comment that everyone has a right to a job. Cutting through all the other babble he spilt that day, during question time she had the chance to address him directly: "So I have a right to a job, Mr. Stepp?"

"Yes, that's right," he somewhat ironically replied.

"Then I want yours," she, perfectly reasonably under the circumstances he espoused, demanded.

"You can't have mine," he asserted.

"But I have a right to a job, and yours seems easy and well paying enough, so I want it," she pressed.

Gail ended up being escorted from the assembly hall at the direction of then University President Fr. Malcolm Carron. Yet her point, I firmly believe, was well made. Who determines, who has the right to determine, who gets what job?

Likewise with our rights in general. There are too many variables involved, not the least of which are what rights of what other people are at play in a given circumstance, to say that any given person has the right to any given thing. To be sure, Gail did not in fact have the right to Stepp's job, but in the man's scenario you would have folks demanding other folks' jobs merely on the grounds that they wanted them, and how do you tell them no without violating their presumed right?

Health care is too important of an issue to be treated this way. It is not something to be bandied about as a mere political question: it must be addressed as a human need and recognized as something which we must allow human beings to pursue as they are able and see fit. Once health becomes nothing less than a political football we have forsaken our right to pursue it and granted the right of giving us health care to government officials. I do not want my life, especially when in grave danger, hinging on toe of a federal placekicker or faceless bureaucratic quarterback.