OT: Entitlements [was Re: Python usage numbers]

[Ian Kelly]

I hate being suckered in by trolls, but this paragraph demands a response.

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> You are born with rights. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
> Healthcare care is NOT a right, healthcare is a privileged.

If you deprive a person of access to healthcare, and they die, then
you have deprived them of life and thus violated the very rights that
you just stated they had.

In any case, taking that phrase from the Declaration of Independence
and holding it out as an exhaustive list of rights is moronic.  First,
because it's not even a legal document -- it's only a statement of
high-minded classical liberalism, albeit a historically important and
influential one.  Second, because it actually states "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
**AMONG** these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  The
phrasing obviously implies that there are other human rights besides
the three examples listed.  After all, the purpose of the document was
not to enumerate all human rights, but to air a list of grievances
against King George and assert the right to revolt against him.

Incidentally, "not being required to pay taxes" is not something that
the founding fathers would have considered a human right, taxation
being necessary to support government and representative government
(at least according to the Declaration of Independence) being
necessary to secure those rights.

> Procreation should be a
> privilege, however sadly for our collective evolution, it's seems to
> be a right :(

There is a word for the philosophy that procreation should be a
privilege reserved for those with good genes: eugenics.  Welcome to
fascism, Rick.