A right is something innate, inborn, and then continually won again, by democracy, revolution, or war, by genuine religious and humanitarian compassion, or freethinking in a variety of chaotic combinations. If it's not a human right, it is just a well-intentioned program, subject to delivery by coercion and blunder, as demonstrated at the local lumberyard:
I was standing in line holding a single roll of blue tape and sixty 5/16 bolts, washers, and nuts that would contribute to steel countertop forms in the shape of the front half of a horse. There are mornings that a guy can wait in line for a long time, especially if someone in front says parenthetically, just before the total of his purchase of lumber is tallied, “Oh yeah, and what do you have in the way of stovepipe?”
Bob will say, “Well, we have everything you need probably. What size of pipe? Cathedral or flat ceiling? Roof pitch?” And the line gets twenty minutes longer. But we all stand there because his title of Bob the Builder, though kind of funny to us, did not come undeserved and carries a lot of respect.
By the time sections of stovepipe are hauled down from the storage area above the store and the customer is on his way, the topic has been shifted by the next in line. I can’t honestly recall what brought Bob to respond with, “…Put me on a boat and send me out on a lake, one with a far shore. And don’t come to get me when I have been out too long. Just leave me alone to die.”
The customer at the counter added, “I know. He spent his whole life, and all he wanted to leave was a home he built and owned, and then there was nothing left after he spent everything on healthcare. Still he died.” I had no idea which previous individual they were talking about, but I understood the gist of the conversation.
Another man in line said, “I’ll be damned if they’re going to get everything I’ve tried to do if I get sick. My wife and I have already agreed, and I’ll keep doing it until I sleep forever and my hammer has to be pried from my hand.”
One by one each of us were contributing to the Tuesday morning church service officiated by Bob the Builder: The Varieties of Builder Experience. There was a, “I’m finally going to track down all the illegal psychedelic drugs I can find, and I’m going to try each one until I find one I like, then I’m going to buy more of it.”
Fourth in line contributed, “I’d like to build something very tall. And then close off the floor and tell them I’m not coming down for anything.”
Then Bob, as I arrived at the counter with my hardware, “Have you given the subject any thought?”
KC: “Too much a long time ago. I don’t know. I don’t want to go lying down. Not indoors I hope. A beer in one hand, a chisel in the other, and maybe just stand me up near a rock and pray for a minor earthquake to bury me quick, without ceremony.”
Bob: “You’re going to need another hand for that chisel to be effective.”
KC: “Then I’d better make it a two-pound sledge instead. I hope by then to build a home myself, from scratch, something modest with some timber beams, and then I’ll think more about the reasons that I won’t collateralize it for prolonged health. But ‘yes’ to those before me. I intend to leave something behind that can be lived in, even if it means that I won’t live as long as possible.”
To call a program like "universal healthcare", however humane the intention, a right is to cheapen the meaning of something sacred. It sounded as though all of us in line would like very much to have a viable, affordable opportunity for excellent healthcare, and it could be a very good thing for the US economy and the human race in general for people to live well. Yet we were most prepared to acknowledge and assert our right to die, if possible on our own terms of what we consider the quality and purpose of life. I’d hate to have a well-meaning bureaucrat from either party managing the Pearly Gates.
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I wrote a clever response, but when I tried to post it, I found out my email address had been stolen by my neighbor in order to set up a gmail account. What I had originally questioned was where rights of any kind come from, if they have to be asserted, fought for, won and re-established. Rather than repeat the original argument I will point out that less than 15 years ago if I observed that my email account had been stolen, almost nobody would have had the foggiest notion what I was talking about. Even the concept of identity theft, though clearly known, would have been thought obscure. Yet the feeling was that something had been taken from me, even if is only a pattern of 1's and 0's somewhere in a Google server. I felt as though I had a right, and that right had been violated.
So if human rights have to be asserted and are mutable, then in what sense are they rights and not mere assertions of self? Even if we appeal to a greater norm (or even a lesser Norm, like the character in Cheers), who establishes the norm and by what right do they do it? A right can't be established by popular consent except in a trivial static analysis, or it is not really a right, is it? It is more of a statute or regulation. We stand on our concepts of rights forgetting completely that most of what we believe comes from late enlightenment philosophy at a crossroads in our Western cultural development between traditional Christian values and rationalism. Many of the most vociferous in asserting rights, from the right at least, reject the rationalist foundation upon which the concept of rights is based. Examined anew, we might not strike the same balance next time.
What I like about the story is how it captures the way we think about healthcare and end of life issues away from professional media opinion shaping. Our health is not separate and abstract, it is inextricably tied to the quality and the purpose of our lives. We create because we must, and we create until we cannot do so any longer. We want to leave more behind materially but what we leave behind is the legacy of our creating. What we leave behind, if we have lived well, is the indelible shape of our own dignity in the minds of those who experienced us in whatever way they might have. Anybody who has ever gone through the personal effects of a loved one passed can tell you that their value, if any, is rarely expressible in market terms anyway. Our health is what allows us to do the work of being. And in the meantime while living, what we want is wellness. What we get is medicine.
But enough of all that. What I really like is that the story is true. I know. Somebody told me, and I believed him.
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