What are your basic RIGHTS, and what should they cost YOU?

originally posted by: schuyler
But is healthcare a "right"? Not if you enslave me to get it it's not.

Well you must be 'enslaved' paying taxes to fund Coastguard search and rescue teams, or your fire department lol.
We choose healthcare and education for everyone in the UK, if you don't like it then stay in the US, simples.
Bleating about the definitions of 'rights' is just cultural semantics.
Let your poor folk suffer without medical treatment because they can't afford it.
Doesn't affect my life, I'm just pleased that everyone in the UK has a right to that healthcare.

a reply to: stolencar18

Innate, inborn rights of natural born human beings have nothing to do with systemic constructs that are designed to negate your only true right, the freedom to exercise will.

a reply to: grainofsand

Perhaps now yall should focus on healing.

It seems kinda lame to tout the benefits of a failing healthcare battle.

Yes it is good to offer it to everyone but what is being offered is not exactly a cure.

It is just the leftovers from our capitalist healthcare system.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: schuyler
But is healthcare a "right"? Not if you enslave me to get it it's not.

Well you must be 'enslaved' paying taxes to fund Coastguard search and rescue teams, or your fire department lol.
We choose healthcare and education for everyone in the UK, if you don't like it then stay in the US, simples.
Bleating about the definitions of 'rights' is just cultural semantics.
Let your poor folk suffer without medical treatment because they can't afford it.
Doesn't affect my life, I'm just pleased that everyone in the UK has a right to that healthcare.

Nonsense. As I explained, "poor folk" have subsidized healthcare in the US. In fact, that's nothing new. The government has provided "poor folk" medical treatment for a long time, just like in the UK. There is no effective difference except that in the UK, wait times for elective stuff are far longer.

And certainly NO ONE is saying it's not in the best interests of a culture to provide services paid for by taxes, including the coast guard or whatever other examples you can point to. You've created a Straw Man argument there because the so-called "differences" you point to don't exist.

But you are, probably willfully, misunderstanding the basic issue here. It's not "just semantics" despite the fact your folks can dream up more rights than Carter has pills.

If all the medical professionals in your country flat out quit, you'd still have your free speech rights. That's because it does not require anyone else to do anything except leave you alone. It's an INHERENT right and that's what makes it a right in the first place. But if your medical professionals quit, where would you get the "RIGHT" to medical care? The answer is that you would not, thus making your "right" to medical care a hollow promise of an ineffective bureaucracy. It's not an inherent right. It cannot stand alone. It requires others to provide for you, and in the absence of those others, your so-called "right," unlike free speech, ceases to exist.

It seems to me that governance is the ability to take and hold land, abrogating personal rights for the good of state. This is the old age battle of science vs. sophistry. I'll take a philosopher's word any day over some alchemist mixing up poisons in his dungeon.

How about the right to knowledge? Someone has an idea to tap into a huge aquifer and irrigate N. Africa. What happened to that idea? The fact of the matter is that you have the right to shut up, at gunpoint, the right to you govmint cheese, until it runs out, or they decide not to make it anymore, and the right to assemble peacefully, all the more easier to mace, water-cannon, flash-bang and generally f you up. Cause those who make the govmint cheese also make the govmint mrap's. For a good read try 1919- The Red Mirage, what really happened to the Internationals.

a reply to: kenzohattori69

That is the point where America began to stumble.

When the masses got their gov. cheese peanut butter and potatoes taken away and replaced with paper.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: Metallicus
If you were to say health care or education were rights I would disagree. Those are entitlements, not rights.

In the UK they are rights. That pleases me.

*Edit*
It's interesting that the right to free speech is considered more important than a right to healthcare in the US.
I find it strange, but then cultural differences and all that, you get what the people in your country wish for I suppose.

Yes, free speech is more important.

So you have "free" health care, but what happens if that care is substandard or if one of your relatives is deemed to be beyond public usefulness so he or she gets put on the Liverpool Care Pathway and dies. If your right to free speech is curtailed enough, the authorities and prevent you from speaking out and telling others about the injustice done to you and your relative. If it gets oppressed enough, you could even be jailed or in some countries shot for attempting to speak out.

If your right to speak out is oppressed enough, the press is thoroughly controlled so no one knows anything except what the government wants you to know like they do in North Korea.

The ability to speak, to pass on information, is how you find out what is going on, but of course, apparently whether or not you can see a doctor is far more important than whether or not you know what's going on in the world and have the right to find out and pass it on.

a reply to: ketsuko
As we are playing what if's.
What if you watch to much fox "news" and actually have no idea what your talking about when it comes to british healthcare?

Dont believe every you hear on your US propaganda channels about us.

Plus I really dont understand this American obsession were rights, Freedoms and values have to be the same EVERYWHERE.


Different country and different cultures have different ways. Accept the fact and move on! Not everyone wants to be like you.

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: Metallicus
If you were to say health care or education were rights I would disagree. Those are entitlements, not rights.

In the UK they are rights. That pleases me.

*Edit*
It's interesting that the right to free speech is considered more important than a right to healthcare in the US.
I find it strange, but then cultural differences and all that, you get what the people in your country wish for I suppose.

Are they really rights though?
Are they paid for by your taxes or other indirect means, making them entitlements? Or privileges. I don't think they are rights in the true sense of the word.

Yes it is.

Diffrent country diffrent values.

Dont like the idea of healthcare being a right? Stay in the USA.

You're wrong...it isn't a right. It's at the expense of someone else, and the labour of someone else. It isn't a right.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: Metallicus
If you were to say health care or education were rights I would disagree. Those are entitlements, not rights.

In the UK they are rights. That pleases me.

*Edit*
It's interesting that the right to free speech is considered more important than a right to healthcare in the US.
I find it strange, but then cultural differences and all that, you get what the people in your country wish for I suppose.

Are they really rights though?
Are they paid for by your taxes or other indirect means, making them entitlements? Or privileges. I don't think they are rights in the true sense of the word.

Then you are using a US definition, here, I'll post some UK quotes:
www.nidirect.gov.uk...

When the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights.
...
the right to education

UK Citizens advice

Right to a GP (local doctor) - Right to hospital treatment - Right to refuse treatment - Right to die

Have a read if your interested but here in the UK Healthcare and education for children is a right, not a privilege.
Maybe you consider rights differently in the US so it's just a semantics thing, perhaps you huys don't consider healthcare as something important regardless of taxes paid or money in the bank, just being a citizen in need.

...again, just a cultural thing, doesn't affect my life

It's funny...you say that the Americans have the semantics backwards, but it's actually you and you're over-defensiveness of a supposed right.

If it imposes a cost or burden on someone else to provide your health care is it something you have a right to?
In other words, do you have a right to force someone else to pay for and/or provide something to you?

If so, you have the right to enslave someone.

The word "right" in your context is not a true right, but an entitlement. Something very different. Just because you choose to define right in a different way does not mean it is a basic human right.

If I start a new country one day and say everyone has the right to bacon and put that in my constitution that doesn't mean it's a true right, where someone has to raise pigs and prepare the meat because I have the right to demand that of them.

Same thing. Funnily, both examples involve pigs, only in your case it's the greedy population.

originally posted by: crazyewok
Plus I really dont understand this American obsession were rights, Freedoms and values have to be the same EVERYWHERE.


Different country and different cultures have different ways. Accept the fact and move on! Not everyone wants to be like you.

You really need to chill out...arrogance is unbecoming, particularly from a person promoting a country as messed up as yours.

This thread is about what basic human rights are. Health care is not one. Not in any way, shape, or form. Just because some people put a higher value on it doesn't mean that it magically becomes a right.

To the other poster....coast guard, fire dept, police, etc are also not rights. They're privileges. We are privileged to have these emergency services available, the same way people are privileged to have access to a doctor.

I don't have a right to a firefighter or paramedic.

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: Metallicus
If you were to say health care or education were rights I would disagree. Those are entitlements, not rights.

In the UK they are rights. That pleases me.

*Edit*
It's interesting that the right to free speech is considered more important than a right to healthcare in the US.
I find it strange, but then cultural differences and all that, you get what the people in your country wish for I suppose.

Are they really rights though?
Are they paid for by your taxes or other indirect means, making them entitlements? Or privileges. I don't think they are rights in the true sense of the word.

Yes it is.

Diffrent country diffrent values.

Dont like the idea of healthcare being a right? Stay in the USA.

You're wrong...it isn't a right. It's at the expense of someone else, and the labour of someone else. It isn't a right.

And your wrong within UK borders.

Healthcare is a RIGHT here.

It not a right in the USA, it is here. Accept that fact and move on.

Guns are a right in the USA, healthcare is a right in the UK. Two different country two different rights.
Not everyone shares the same rights and values as you, sooner you Americans accept that fact the sooner half the world will stop hating you for being arrogant pricks.

originally posted by: stolencar18

You really need to chill out...arrogance is unbecoming,

Thats rich.

The only arrogant one I see is you as your the one refusing to accept diffrent opinion round the world.

originally posted by: stolencar18
particularly from a person promoting a country as messed up as yours.

Again rich from a country with the highest homicide rate, incarceration rate, debt ect in western world.

UK got it problems, big ones but the USA is certainly not doing much better.....far far far far from it.

originally posted by: stolencar18
This thread is about what basic human rights are. Health care is not one. Not in any way, shape, or form. Just because some people put a higher value on it doesn't mean that it magically becomes a right.

And you 100% wrong and Right.

What one views as a basic human right will vary from country to country and even region to region. You cant pigeon hole the entire world into one narrow US centric viewpoint.

a reply to: stolencar18

What are your basic RIGHTS, and what should they cost YOU?

I think this is a great question, and I really appreciate the way you framed it, because it perfectly highlights the fundamental issues that need to be addressed. "What are our rights in theory?" and "How do we make it work in practice?"

What are our basic rights?

The Declaration of Independence declares and defines our rights as natural rights, granted by nature's god, and are self-evident. In other words, if you can do it for yourself by yourself (and/or other consenting adults), then it is your right. We have a right to life because we are here... unless someone takes it by force. We have a right to free speech because we can... unless someone exerts force to stop us. We have a right to freedom of conscience/religion because we can... unless someone exerts force to stop us.

The Declaration likewise declares and establishes that we are all created equal, subject to the same laws of nature; therefore, with equal rights to the bounty and resources of the earth. So we have a right to live somewhere... we have a right to feed and sustain our bodies... we have a right to nurse and heal our bodies... all with the bounty of the earth provided for all by nature's god.

No one has the right to more than their "fair share." How much is too much? When one person's takings leave too little for the rest. (This is known as the "Lockean Proviso," according to the influential natural law philosopher John Locke, a contemporary and friend to many of the founding fathers.)

What should they cost us?

Nothing. The real question should be: What should it cost government and/or society to impede and infringe our natural rights for the "greater good?"

We have the right to life, and therefore the right to protect and defend our life. If government/society is going to use the force of law to deny us weapons to defend our lives, what should government then do to protect us?

We have a right to live somewhere and a right to work and produce from the earth's resources. If government is going to divvy up all the land, what is government going to do to make sure we have a patch of earth to live on and off of? If government is going to make laws and regulations about the homes we live in (zoning, electricity, plumbing, etc.), then what should government do to ensure everyone can do so?

We have a right to life, and therefore a right to the healing gifts of the earth. If government is going to control/restrict our access to medicines -- then what is government going to do to ensure everyone access and availability?

We have a right to learn, and a right to free association. If government is going to regulate who can teach us what in order for us to make a living (accreditation, licensing, etc.), then what is government going to do to ensure all of us can attain an acceptable education?

The bottom line is that every government intervention and violation of our natural rights creates at least many problems as it solves. Every government intervention creates winners and losers. Every government intervention creates greater dependency and impedes personal independence and self-sufficiency. And when you throw crony capitalism and/or nanny statism into the equation, absolutely nothing good can come of it and everyone gets hurt... even the few cronies profiting handsomely who think they're so darn clever. (Think Obamacare.)

Our best and only hope is to use government to empower and enable everyone to be the best they can be -- via education, health care, property rights, etc. -- to keep us stronger than "them." We should be doing everything we can to make individuals as resourceful and self-sufficient and self-sustaining as possible.

But that would actually require folks to unite... to put people before profits... to stop hating others...

I won't be holding my breath.

a reply to: schuyler

...if your medical professionals quit, where would you get the "RIGHT" to medical care? The answer is that you would not, thus making your "right" to medical care a hollow promise of an ineffective bureaucracy. It's not an inherent right. It cannot stand alone. It requires others to provide for you, and in the absence of those others, your so-called "right," unlike free speech, ceases to exist.

This is so sad and disheartening to read. Of course we have a right to health care!!! This earth is filled with plants and other things with healing qualities and we have every right to use these resources to sustain and nurture and heal our bodies!!!

I do not have a right to any one else's service, obviously.... but neither government nor society has the right to force me to rely on others for my healthcare.

We have a natural right, an inalienable right, a God-given right if you will, to do what we can to heal ourselves, using the fruits and bounty of the earth, and government needs to get the hell out of our way.

originally posted by: Boadicea
a reply to: schuyler

...if your medical professionals quit, where would you get the "RIGHT" to medical care? The answer is that you would not, thus making your "right" to medical care a hollow promise of an ineffective bureaucracy. It's not an inherent right. It cannot stand alone. It requires others to provide for you, and in the absence of those others, your so-called "right," unlike free speech, ceases to exist.

This is so sad and disheartening to read. Of course we have a right to health care!!! This earth is filled with plants and other things with healing qualities and we have every right to use these resources to sustain and nurture and heal our bodies!!!

I do not have a right to any one else's service, obviously.... but neither government nor society has the right to force me to rely on others for my healthcare.

We have a natural right, an inalienable right, a God-given right if you will, to do what we can to heal ourselves, using the fruits and bounty of the earth, and government needs to get the hell out of our way.

With all due respect, what you're referring to isn't "health care" in the form anyone is talking about. The health care everyone is talking about is hospitals, etc. You don't have a right to any of that. To speak to your statement, if you can find natural solutions that don't intrude on anyone else's property that they have earned and paid for, that don't cost anyone else money in any way, directly or indirectly, and don't cause harm to anyone else, directly or indirectly, then by all means you have the PRIVILEGE (oh ya...not a right) to rub herbs and plant extracts and bug guts on your wounds to heal them.

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: stolencar18

You really need to chill out...arrogance is unbecoming,

Thats rich.

The only arrogant one I see is you as your the one refusing to accept diffrent opinion round the world.

originally posted by: stolencar18
particularly from a person promoting a country as messed up as yours.

Again rich from a country with the highest homicide rate, incarceration rate, debt ect in western world.

UK got it problems, big ones but the USA is certainly not doing much better.....far far far far from it.

originally posted by: stolencar18
This thread is about what basic human rights are. Health care is not one. Not in any way, shape, or form. Just because some people put a higher value on it doesn't mean that it magically becomes a right.

And you 100% wrong and Right.

What one views as a basic human right will vary from country to country and even region to region. You cant pigeon hole the entire world into one narrow US centric viewpoint.

Actually...I'm not from the US, nor do I live in the US, although I certainly am more aware about their politics and issues than most Americas are.

Having said that, a right cannot be an opinion. You can't have the opinion or make the choice that "I have a right to X". That then becomes a privilege that you are entitled to.

If your "right" imposes on anyone else and takes away from their rights then it isn't a right - it's a privilege, or entitlement.

Just because your country chose to say "Everyone has access to health care" doesn't mean it's a right. Doctors could all wind up and quit. Then what? Do you have a right to force them to treat you?

It's a privilege and I don't understand what you can't wrap your head around here. It's something that you pay for indirectly that you then get to use for your own benefit, while someone else profits from providing the service to you. If that service provider decides to quit you lose that privilege.

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: stolencar18

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: Metallicus
If you were to say health care or education were rights I would disagree. Those are entitlements, not rights.

In the UK they are rights. That pleases me.

*Edit*
It's interesting that the right to free speech is considered more important than a right to healthcare in the US.
I find it strange, but then cultural differences and all that, you get what the people in your country wish for I suppose.

Are they really rights though?
Are they paid for by your taxes or other indirect means, making them entitlements? Or privileges. I don't think they are rights in the true sense of the word.

Yes it is.

Diffrent country diffrent values.

Dont like the idea of healthcare being a right? Stay in the USA.

You're wrong...it isn't a right. It's at the expense of someone else, and the labour of someone else. It isn't a right.

And your wrong within UK borders.

Healthcare is a RIGHT here.

It not a right in the USA, it is here. Accept that fact and move on.

Guns are a right in the USA, healthcare is a right in the UK. Two different country two different rights.
Not everyone shares the same rights and values as you, sooner you Americans accept that fact the sooner half the world will stop hating you for being arrogant pricks.

Ha..like I said...your arrogance.
You're privileged. You don't have a right to health care. It's not even debatable. It's a privilege that the population and government decided to provide that you pay for you.

I certainly hope I don't need to explain how you pay for it.