Most of the considerable opposition which has emerged to date to Proposition 4, the so-called “Community Bill of Rights” which will appear on the November general election ballot, has focused on the measure’s fiscal implications for the City and its implications for the local economy. These are certainly serious concerns. Indeed, the measure is likely to have adverse impacts even if it fails, unless it is defeated overwhelmingly. A narrow defeat will still discourage investment (and encourage disinvestment) in the city of Spokane, because investors and entrepreneurs will worry that Prop 4’s leftist backers will soon try again. It will stigmatize Spokane as a risky place to do business.

But an even more compelling reason for rejecting it is the moral one.

This “Bill of Frights” (a “fright” being a fiat right) declares that persons have “rights” to “affordable” health care, housing, energy, to be paid a certain wage, and various other goodies on every leftist’s wish list. The trouble here, of course, is that all these goodies must be provided by other persons — health care workers, builders, energy producers, employers, et al. So a claim to a “right” to such things entails a claim to the services of other people — to their time, talents, energy, and the fruits of their labor.

The term “rights,” as it has been understood throughout the history of philosophy and of the common law (where it originated), and as it was understood by the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Bills of Rights in the US Constitution and the constitutions of all the States, denotes those inviolable claims and immunities naturally possessed by every free person. Per this tradition governments and courts are created to defend these rights against violators (“To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men . . .”) Rights precede government, define its mission, and limit its powers.

But what is a “right,” exactly? A right is a simply a constraint upon action which one person living in a social setting with other persons may invoke against those others. It forbids others from acting, in their efforts to enhance their own welfare, in ways which would injure or reduce the welfare of the person who bears the right, by taking from her something she values and which she has acquired innocently. “Rights” is the concept which forbids thieves from stealing your property, and forbids other predators and pillagers from maiming, raping, enslaving, and murdering you (“no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”).

To which things, and what kinds of things, may persons claim rights? Well, to anything from which they derive enjoyment, benefit, or advantage and of which they have come into possession without having inflicted loss or injury on someone else. Most such goods are acquired by producing or discovering them, e.g., the artist who makes a painting has a right to the painting; the prospector who finds a gold nugget has a right to the nugget; the hunter who fashions a spear has a right to the spear; the farmer who plants and harvests a bushel of corn has a right to the corn. But each person is also in possession of various valuable things she brought with her into the world — e.g., her life, her body, her various talents and natural abilities. Those latter are the so-called “natural rights:” the rights to one’s natural possessions and to the exercise of one’s innate faculties. Like “common rights” — one’s rights to things acquired after one’s arrival in the world — they are also things the agent has gained without imposing injuries or losses on anyone else.

Given this historic understanding, it is obvious that no one can have a “right” to goods others must produce or to services others must provide. That perversion of the term turns the concept of rights on its head — “rights” being the very concept which protects each person in the possession, use and enjoyment of her time, talents, her person, and the products of her labor. Someone who claims a right to others’ time, talents, and to the fruits of their labor is declaring those others to be his slaves. The backers of Prop 4 are asking you, the voters, to redefine this concept so that it permits — indeed, requires — government to commit the very depredations it was created to prevent. The measure should be titled “The Community Bill of Rights Violations.”

The vote on Proposition 4 will indicate the extent to which Spokane’s voters understand the concept of rights, and the maturity of their moral instincts. It will also reveal how many of this city’s residents regard themselves as free persons who “own” themselves and who live in a community comprised of other free persons, with whom they may freely enter into relationships on any mutually agreeable terms, versus how many regard themselves (or perhaps only certain unfortunate others), as slaves of the State, obliged to labor as its minions direct for the benefit of those minions and their political clients. It will reveal how many voters have abandoned the American ideal of a free society in favor of the illusory ideal of the free lunch.

But every voter enticed by the prospect of a free lunch should ask herself, “If others may be forced to serve me today, what services will I be forced to provide tomorrow?”

Tags: Envision Spokane, individual freedom, political nonsense, public interest

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Political Theory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.