Beeb Discovers Fundamental Human Right to Internet Access

Written By : Dave Blount

You didn’t need to read up on Obama’s background to know in advance that he is an authoritarian collectivist. All you had to do was pay attention during the debates. When asked whether healthcare is a privilege or a “right,” Chairman Zero promptly answered that it is a “right.”

Healthcare consists of goods and services. To say that you have a “right” to goods and services provided by others, irrespective of whether you pay for them, is an assault on the very concept of rights. Bureaucrats could just as easily declare that everyone has a “right” to free groceries, clothes, and automobiles.

Goods and services consist of our property and our time. What the bureaucrats are really saying when they create phony “rights” is that we do not have a right to our own property and time. These can be confiscated for redistribution at the whim of the State. That is to say, we have no true rights. All we have are privileges masquerading as rights — privileges that can be yanked away by the heavy hand of government at any moment. Whether you choose to call this communism, fascism, “social justice,” or state slavery, it is tyranny in its purest form.

After our rulers have provided us with a “right” to second-rate government healthcare at the expense of our right to own property, what will be next? According to the collectivists at the BBC, the answer is Internet access — for everyone on the planet.

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The survey — of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries — found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.

International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.

Who will pay for every last shoeless peasant in Uganda to have Internet access? Who do you think?

Of course, Internet access isn’t much good without a computer, so get ready to pay for every last shoeless peasant in Uganda to have a new computer too. But what if they don’t have power for the computer? No matter, American taxpayers can see to it that everyone on earth has power, preferably provided by windmills at exorbitant cost.

Once everyone is online, they’ll be able to see all the other marvelous things that the squishy soft tyrants in the media and UN will soon declare they have a right to at someone else’s expense — until the whole corrupt house of parasitism collapses under the weight of taxes, and we’re all shoeless peasants, with no right even to our own grass huts, which will be confiscated for redistribution if we make them any bigger than any of the other huts.

Soon to be wired for Internet access.

On a tip from UmmahGummah. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Mike_M

“Access” is the trick. Of course nobody believes that people should be denied access to health care or the internet. So when the question is asked that way everybody supports it.

But when it’s time to actually pay for things, “access” turns into “I want it right now for free”. Would four out of five people support paying for the ISP fees of others? Doubtful.
President_Friedman

The only thing “fundamental” here is a general misunderstanding of rights theory. It is a major problem, because you can’t even have reasonable debate about these issues without being somewhat versed in what it is you are talking about. You know, in the healthcare debate, there is a logical way to present the argument for discussion that healthcare should be a Constitutionally guaranteed legal right, but I have yet to meet the liberal who understands (or respects) rights theory well enough to make it. Instead, the debate always comes down to an appeal to some arbitrarily defined concept of “fundamental right” or even calling healthcare a “natural right” (which it absolutely cannot be if you understand what a natural right is).

Rights theory is one of those areas where an academic understanding of what you are discussing is imperative to being able to participate in the discussion. Arguing for a right just because you think it would be something nice to have is like buying a pet grizzly bear because you like cuddling with furry animals.
http://networdblog.blogspot.com/ Christopher_Taylor

It is a common post modernist conceit that being healthy is a right and one of the highest goals of mankind (along with being happy and comfortable). Humans are frail creatures and we all are going to die. All of us are going to die. We’ll all get old, we’ll all get sick, we’ll all get hurt, we’ll all eventually die.

That we desire to be as healthy and safe as possible in the time we have on earth is reasonable and proper, but the idea that we can somehow achieve perfect safety and health is ridiculous and insulting.
http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

It is impossible to define as a “right” anything that must be provided to you by another, because that makes the other a slave to your needs. You have a “right” to internet access or anything else only insofar as you can provide it for yourself.
President_Friedman

Posted by CavalierX
2010-03-08 14:42:44

“It is impossible to define as a “right” anything that must be provided to you by another…”

Actually you can have such rights. The Constitution even guarantees us some such rights. For instance, the Constitution guarantees you a right to a trial, right to a jury, right to legal counsel… all those must be provided by another. These are knowns as legal rights (sometimes called positive rights, or claim rights, depending on the context).

The important thing to know is that those types of rights are politically relative and are mostly acknowledged in order to procure your more basic rights. Natural rights, on the other hand, are universal. To put it another way: if the government could come up with a better way to insure you would get fair treatment when accused by society of wrongdoing, they could completely do away with your guarantee to a trial by jury and be justified in their actions. There are no circumstances, however, where they could completely do away with your right to speak your mind, and still expect you to be bound to the social contract (they might limit it in certain situations, but they can’t completely do away with it).

That is why healthcare (ir internet access) can never be a natural right, because a natural right, by its very definition, is the lack of an obligation to do something. It is a choice or exercise that you would have “in the wild” that you cannot reasonably be asked to give up in order to join with other men in society.

So when liberals talk about making healthcare a right, what they mean (even though they usually don’t realize it) is that they want to make it a legal right, antecedent from our natural right to life. That gives them three responsibilities:

1) Proving that the lack of access to healthcare is an insurmountable obstacle to the pursuit of life (which would include proving the opposite: that access to healthcare somehow guarantees life), so much so that people cannot reasonably be expected to cooperate within society if they are denied access to it.

2) Having done so, they must then prove that government is the best method of providing this service at the highest quality to the highest number of people.

2) Should they be able to convince enough people of this, then they should acknowledge that what they are asking for is a fundamental amendment of our social contract in America, a contract that is enshrined by the Constitution. Therefore it is disingenuous and even unethical of them to attempt to secure this “right” by any other means than Constitutional Amendment.
Mike_M

Posted by President_Friedman
2010-03-08 15:47:25

Very good post, Prez.

My answer to the question of legal rights would be that there does not appear to be any instance of such a right except when necessitated by some other government action or law.

For example, in the case of legal counsel and trial by jury, the state has made the claim against the accused (if there was no government, there would be no trial), so the state must provide for those rights. Likewise with representation by elected officials, but the pay and perks tend to guarantee that those positions get filled…

I suppose it would be possible to try and make an argument through a gross abuse of the Due Process clause (a Constitutional law can deprive you of liberty and property), but the first part of the clause (No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States) would invalidate compulsory provision of health care. Meaning you could call it a right but still couldn’t force anybody to provide it free of charge.

As you conclude, that leaves a Constitutional amendment as the only way to establish universal health care as an entitlement.
President_Friedman

Posted by Mike_M
2010-03-08 16:41:12
“that leaves a Constitutional amendment as the only way to establish universal health care as an entitlement.”

It certainly should, but they got Social Security and Medicare without having to go that route, so there is now a legal precedent for them to ignore the philosophical and logical arguments for a Constitutional Amendment and instead try to apply the General Welfare clause to the issue.

What they don’t realize, is that every time they rearrange society at the expense of the integrity of the Constitution, they invalidate the social contract that binds us together just a little bit more. The binding power of that contract, like reality itself, is not infinitely elastic.
http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

Actually you can have such rights. The Constitution even guarantees us some such rights. For instance, the Constitution guarantees you a right to a trial, right to a jury, right to legal counsel… all those must be provided by another

You only get to exercise those rights if you are being charged with a crime. You can’t just go out and demand a jury or a lawyer from the government whenever you feel like seeing one. Although you’re right; someone must provide those services.
Mike_M

“What they don’t realize, is that every time they rearrange society at the expense of the integrity of the Constitution, they invalidate the social contract that binds us together just a little bit more.”

Aristocracy of Pull, my friend. We’re backsliding from the Rule of Law to the Rule of Men, and our economy is paying the price. When the economy can no longer support the pacification of the people through entitlements, say hello to Greece, Weimar Germany, etc.

It’s not too late to reinforce that social contract through respect for the Constitution and limited government (which will allow the economy to operate again), but time is running out rapidly. When people no longer trust the government and can not support their basic needs, they revert to violence. Even the most arrogant and insulated of politicians should know where that road leads.

Debbie Spend-it-now is selling America’s future to the Chinese

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