Rep. Price’s views differs from Founding Fathers’

TO THE EDITOR:

The Daily Tar Heel’s coverage of U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., at Wednesday’s health care forum reveals that the representative has a view of rights that is very different from the ones enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

“Price called access to basic health care a fundamental human right, lumping it in with staples like food and shelter,” the DTH reported.

With this view, rights are positive entitlements to some good or service. The unmentioned corollary of positive rights is the obligation of someone to provide said rights; in the case of a right to health care, it becomes the duty of doctors and nurses, the producers of health care, to provide it.

America was founded on the principle of negative rights, i.e., the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only obligation of these rights is to not interfere in another’s exercise of their rights. It is the principle of negative, i.e., individual rights, explicitly recognized by our founders, that has distinguished America from all other countries.

Positive rights, by their nature, negate individual rights and enslave the producers of “rights” to the non-producers. Rep. Price’s view on rights is wrong, dangerous, and contradicts the ideas of nobler statesmen like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.


James A. Wadsworth
President
Carolina Objectivist Forum