Thursday's interesting reads

"Oy, Hillary" by Benjamin H. Friedman at Cato@Liberty: I don't know all of the arguments, but I really agreed with this statement. I don't think politicians should be beholden to the whims and fancies of the electorate. This leads to sectionalism and creates bad policies that help one group to the detriment of the country. It's one of the things that makes earmarks hard for me to bear. Our elected representatives should place the good of the country as a whole in front of any state bias. And if they can't determine what's in the country's best interest, they should refrain from doing anything.

"Ours being a representative government, the president shouldn’t even unconditionally support the wishes of the American people, but that would at least be the right country." My emphasis.

This was actually posted on Cafe Hayek on Wednesday:

"Is health care a right? I have no idea. What I do know is that treating it like a right can be hazardous to our health."

This was my comment:

"If health care is a right, lets make sure we aren't leaving out anything more important. I would consider food more important than healthcare. We can live a lot longer without health care than we can without food. We do have a right to eat? It's true we have relatively fewer people who go to bed hungry in the US than exists in other countries. Does that mean its less important? Lets make sure all of our people have eaten, realized their right to food, before we worry about health care.

I propose we nationalize the food industry, institute a single payer system. Instead of going to the grocery store with credit card in hand (we have to pay with a credit card due to the lack of funds in our bank accounts to write checks), we simply tell the cashier how many members of our family and they provide our allotment of rice, potatoes, beans, and milk. If we're lucky, we're in the front of the line and get a small chicken leg.

I've thought about this idea of whether its a right or not and where it came from. My guess is that thinking we have a "right" to health care falls under the previously expressed (back in '76) right to life. If we have a right to life, we, by extension, have a right to anything that helps us prolong life, enjoy life, etc. I disagree, but I wonder if that might be the thinking of those who believe it. I also think that calling it a right in the first place is simply an attempt to appeal to the inner Thomas Jefferson in us, a hope our emotions overcome our reason. But we shouldn't be surprised with this, because its the approach modern liberals have used for decades."