Do you believe that health care should be a right? Then go to the June meeting of the Diablo Valley Democratic Club to learn how SB 840, the California Universal Healthcare Act, would provide fiscally sound, affordable and comprehensive health insurance for all Californians and how to get it passed.
Pat Snyder, chair of the Contra Costa chapter of Health Care for All, sponsor of the OneCareNow campaign for universal healthcare, and legislative consultant in the Health Care Program of the League of Women Voters of California, will explain the bill. Wednesday, June 18, 7 to 9 p.m., Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, 55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek. Social half-hour at 7 p.m. Meeting and program begin at 7:30 p.m. Information: 925-335-2647.
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Cory, sorry for the delay.
Without wading too far into the tall weeds of Locke’s espitemology let me note that,
Locke gave authority to knowing about rights to the relations that exist between an infinitely intelligent being (God) and a rational but dependent being (Man). Moral norms are hence rational (and dependent not on freedom but relation to God), and social organization is identified with divine right and then with natural right.
Given this ontic dependency, the way I read it (given my own dalliance with Scottish Realism), it’s hard to make Mr. Locke espouse some absolute idea of freedom;
rather the apparent built-in relational aspect of God-Man and Man-Man appear to trump interpretation that would posit some super-duper notion of individual freedom.
he could be wrong
Do you then agree with Hobbes that morals and ethics have no place in determining the system of laws? As for Rousseau and his social contract, that inevitably leads to the vicitimization of some individuals by the state that enforces the “contract”, and also to privileges for the enforcers.
By nature I mean that Lockean natural state in which the individual may order his affairs without depending on the will of another. I think you’ll agree that I can be at liberty wthout depending on the will of another, but I cannot claim a right to health care at the expense of others without the philanthropy or coercion of others.
Rousseau and Hobbes had differing ideas about the Human Condition one “finds in nature.”
Where in nature is “liberty” for that matter?
Doesn’t liberty already assume a social context and not some state of nature whether noble and idyllic — or — nasty, brutish, and short (bill buckley’s law firm, i recall)?
Medical care is not found in nature and is therefore a product of human endeavor. It cannot be a “right” because that supposes that others must forgo their right to life, liberty and other natural rights in order to provide medical care. Instead, the “right to health care” just a rhetorical cover for government control of medicine.
We cannot repeal the law of supply and demand no matter how much we try, so if health care is to be provided for “free” other controls must be put in place to reduce demand. If it won’t be the efficient method of people choosing according to their conscience and their means, then it will have to be the inefficient method of coercion by threat of fines and incarceration. No one, particularly the “freedom loving” liberals should be surprised when government starts demanding certain behavior controls in order to reduce cost, and to also ration expensive services among those not deemed to be worth the cost.