The Law of Conservation of Rights
Posted by PintofStout on July 15th, 2009
“Rights can neither be created nor be destroyed”
The above law was prompted by the headline I saw on my Yahoo page this morning stating (paraphrased; I can’t find the headline now), “House bill to make health care a right” or maybe “…a right of all Americans.” As any cognitive person who isn’t out to exercise control of others could tell you, the Bill of Rights – or any other declaration of rights – doesn’t establish rights at all, but only enumerated some of them. Rights cannot be legislated into existence because they existed before the legislation (Skipping for now the always contentious discussion of the existence of rights, natural law, etc in the first place. Try the discussion here for that.).
“Rights can neither be created nor be destroyed”
Looking at the LCR again, I’m reminded of something I read in Mises’ Human Action a few days ago about theorems and a priori knowledge. “Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. All its implications are logically derived from the premises and were already contained in them.” (Ch.2 Sec 3) In the case of rights, all rights are derived from the premise that we own ourselves. This ownership gives the owner exclusive control over the thoughts and actions in that domain, which happens to extend only as far as the next person’s domain. Trying to fabricate a right to health care isn’t correcting some trespass upon those not receiving such care, but initiating a trespass upon those who must provide it, i.e. pay for it via time or taxes. In other words, not a right at all because it cannot possibly be derived logically from the premise of self-ownership.
“Rights can neither be created nor be destroyed”
According to the LCR, rights cannot be legislated away, either. Free speech zones, gun bans, and prohibition don’t eliminate the rights to free speech, self-defense, or the pursuit of happiness but simply trespass against them. Suppression of the exercise of rights, such as those things listed previously, still doesn’t destroy the right.
Exploring further into this will surely lead to the dabate about rights’ existence and premises, but I’ll leave that for another time. For now, let’s just leave it at the Law of Conservation of Rights, shall we?
January 7th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
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