You Don't Have a Right to Other People's Stuff

It was a red banner week for the flaming red left. First, a principle object of liberal rage and hatred died, and then Saturday brought a rare Rush Limbaugh apology. Let's bring the focus back where it belongs: Personal Rights

Progressives have trashed the concept of natural rights, ironically exchanging it for a modern-day Divine Right of Kings

Our nation was founded upon negative rights; essentially, the right to be left alone to do what you wish with your life, liberty and property as you pursue your own personal happiness. The left now crashes in demanding positive rights; the right to shake down others for  free stuff. This is a direct violation of our natural negative rights, eventuating the noisy culture clash.  

They've used the state to confiscate our inherent rights to life, liberty and property, and they put to a vote which "rights" will be granted back to us. We get whatever our Emperor and his Supreme Council bestows upon us.

The various liberal outrage syndicates ensure they get their fair share, while denying political enemies the same.  At the first sign of a threat to the confiscation schemes, they send in an aggrieved tribe screaming choleric indignation to scare off the predatory politicians.  In this brave new world of collectivized rights that are doled back out, whoever screams the loudest wins.

This is upside-down, as Mark Steyn explains:

When it comes to human rights, I go back to 1215 and Magna Carta [...] Back then, “human rights” were rights of humans, of individuals — and restraints upon the king: They’re the rights that matter: limitations upon kingly power.

Eight centuries later, we have entirely inverted the principle: “Rights” are now gifts that a benign king graciously showers upon his subjects — the right to “free” health care, to affordable housing... 

Obama’s bureaucratic edict is upgraded into the “right to contraception coverage at no additional cost.” And, up against a “human right” as basic as that, how can such peripheral rights as freedom of conscience possibly compete? (Mark Steyn)

Nobody is proposing to deny women access to contraception. You wouldn't know it by the hysterical left, screaming like they had Torquemada's hot poker up their rear ends.

Here's some needed clarity on this inflamed issue:

But the right to choose contraception does not entail a right to have it paid for by someone else, any more than the right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment entails the right to a free Smith & Wesson. (Culture Warriors)

The Left Wing:  DC's Newest Reality Show!

The apotheosis of the left's shameless claim on the property of others comes in the form of a 30-year old woman, on national tv, brazenly demanding others pay for her to get her freak on.  "Her parents should be proud," intoned the president.  Uh huh...  Progressives should be proud, the indoctrination is taking hold.

The left has taken Hollywood's West Wing to the next delusional level, with life imitating art as their latest iconic icon provided mock testimony in a phony Hollywood-like set, complete with liberal politicians and their handmaidens in the press starring as themselves!

As Sandra "Get Yo Freak On for Free" Fluke is finding out (Is it true Bill Clinton called Obama asking for her phone number?), when you drag your dirty undies out into the public square and force other people to bow down to your morality and you demand that they pay for you to knock off a piece, it is no longer private morality. It’s public, and your behavior becomes a legitimate debate topic.

Just look at how Obamacare made everyone's health a public topic, giving the first lady a state-sponsored podium to scold all those fat kids.

Battling Rights Claims

What we have in this debate is a clash not between two liberty interests, but rather between two rights-claims – one negative (genuine), the other positive (counterfeit). All that is required for the exercise of a negative right (to self-ownership and, redundantly, liberty and one’s legitimately acquired belongings) is other people’s noninterference.

[...] But the fulfillment of positive rights requires that other people act affirmatively even if they don’t want to — say, by providing products or paying the bills. If one person’s freedom depends on the infringement of someone else’s freedom, the first claim is illegitimate. To hold otherwise is to reject the principle of equality.  (Reason)

The progressive idea of positive rights is a thinly-disguised coercion by mob rule. This direct democracy, granting positive rights to whoever screams the loudest, flies in the face of American values. The American way is to respect the natural rights of all; not cheering when government goes jihad on the rights of your enemies and then gives you the spoils.

Freeman - Liberty: The Other Equality
Mark Steyn - The Perversion of Rights

Sandra Fluke does not Speak for Us

Sandra Fluke Transcript
Rush Limbaugh Apologizes