"social and economic guarantees are controversial."
Yes. Nobody denies you the right to help those you can, but people do not have a right to tell me to help their neighbor. If they want the helped then it is their moral imperative to aid them themselves and not shift their responsibility to others.
"Consider the widespread view that democracies should respect 'negative rights,' or rights against government interference, but should not acknowledge 'positive rights,' or rights to government help."
See my dozens of posts on personal responsibility and noblesse oblige.
"This view is tangled in a massive confusion, and for one simple reason: The so-called negative rights are rights to government help, too."
Wrong!!!
"Private property depends on property rights, which do not exist without government and law."
Wrong. It exists just fine in virtually every system including anarchy and socialism, only in socialism it is reserved for the top government bureaucrats.
"If rich people have a great deal of wealth, it is because the government furnishes a system in which they are entitled to have and to keep that wealth."
BS, utter BS. If a person spends significantly less than they earn they are bound to become rich if they invest it wisely. It a person is entrepreneurial enough, government can try to obstruct their ability to become successful, but ultimately government will fail most of the time. Only by creating a nanny state can government prevent people from creating their own success.
"People work very hard for what they earn. But without government, people would face a free-for-all, a kind of test of strength."
The author is describing anarchy. This is a straw man argument, typical for those who cannot make their point through logic. The sentences that follow it are similarly irrelevant to the author's point.
"They might fear that the Second Bill would destroy people's incentives and reward sloth."
It is not fear, it is a reasonable expectation based on history. To the best of my knowledge, not one socialist system has ever produced a fraction of the results that a competitive system did.
"He did not say that people should be given resources if they were able-bodied but refused to work."
See noblesse oblige.
"It was only when opportunity was not enough that Roosevelt argued for minimal guarantees as a matter of basic justice."
See noblesse oblige.
Don't think that because you feel for people that it gives you the right to make alleviating your feelings of guilt my responsibility. |
