Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A New Right

John Conyers thinks we should have a new right. He is not talking about a change in his political opposition either.

During his speech at a recent National Press Club luncheon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said he is introducing a constitutional amendment that would establish health care as “a right” for all Americans.
Humans have rights to free speech, self defense, the right to be left alone by government.

When exactly did this new right come into being? If it is new then it is not unalienable.

And what exactly is the cut off point? Should the government spend $1 billion to give me 1 more week of life? Or is $100 million a more reasonable number?

To exercise the right to keep and bear arms you have to buy your own. Will the same be true of medical care?

If we have a right to government medical care can I please have a government tank? Or maybe just a couple of mortar tubes, a rifle or three (full auto), and a shot gun for clearing trenches. Did I leave out a pistol? Plus 10,000 rounds of ammunition a year for each so I can keep in practice. And replacements (the most modern) for all the above every 5 years. That way all the militias will be similarly armed.

Oh yeah. I want to add some anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons to the mix as well. Probably 50 of each. You can never get too much practice.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

me too!

ZenDraken said...

I thought the Bill of Rights was supposed to *protect* rights, not provide them.

Oh, well. Put me on the list too. I've always wanted a good M-14, a Colt 45, a 12 guage pump-action, and plenty of ammo for all of 'em.

Thanks.

Unknown said...

As a foreigner who has been born and raised in the kind of social democracy that the US is turning into, I can attest to the fact that there are no free guns.

This means that I, with the correct permits, can purchase a gun whenever I want.

Please note that this differs with how the free health-care is provided, as the system requires me to fit my medical condition into the bureaucratic framework within which the health-care is provided. Namely,
- I need to wait in line for treatment (the more age-related the treatment is seen to be, the longer the line - patients dying before treatment are a net win on both the health- and pension-budgets)
- Cost-cutting efforts (because the system sees the 'free' treatment as an expenditure) angle the treatments towards lower-cost treatments and away from more effective treatments (doctors have recently been advised to cut down on the use of expensive x-ray machines, and rather prescribe pain-killers as treatments)
- Budget-requirements leave hospitals overcrowded and partially empty(!) as unlocking a wing requires staffing, and thus incurs expenses (so wings that are in use are over-crowded, and the staff are over-worked)
- Mis-staffing, where medical doctors are hired instead of secretarial staff as kingdom-building is endemic (having 30 medical doctors in your organization gives significantly more cred than having 10 doctors, 15 nurses and 5 secretarial clerks. The added expenses come out of a budget out of your control, and the loss of efficiency can be remedied by working longer hours)

In short, if anything serious were to befall me, I would need to wait for diagnosis until resources were made available for my use, hope that my malady was one where resources were allocated for patients that were assumed to be returning to work, and not where patients were assumed to be pensioners, and pay more (through my taxes) for a lower standard service.

So no. No free weapons, please. I want my guns now.

-S

Anonymous said...

Sure, the evil Government needs to leave us alone...

Don't tread on me, right???

And yet it's you folks who scream and yell about women who don't want government to apply restrictions on what they can and cannot do to their own bodies.

Your hypocrisy is astonishing.

Tom Bridgeland said...

Can anyone follow a logical thread in 99%'s comment?

ZenDraken said...

I think 99 is confusing conservatives with evangelicals or neo-conservatives, or something like that.

99: government IS evil. Some government is a necessary evil. But all seekers of power should be regarded with great suspicion, regardless of the goodness of their intentions.