Rights are not a fundamental physical or divine law of the universe. If they were, democracy and freedom would not be such a rare phenomena in humanity's history.
Rights are clearly a human invention, but the fact that rights are something socially constructed does not cheapen them.
The reason we say that people are endowed by creation with rights is because we want to make it *impossible* for them to be taken away by argument, by assigning them to an authority beyond question. It is theocratic/political view that enshrines certain rights as untouchable by man. But it is merely a device, it is not the truth.
The truth is, it is MAN who has endowed man with these rights. And it is man who continues to struggle everyday to make sure they are not lost. Without the struggle against those who would gladly take them away, they would disappear.
What I would argue is that individual rights can only be "negative rights", meaning rights that restrict others from infringing your rights. For example, freedom of speech does not take away your right to speech, it merely restricts you from trying to take away mine.
The Bill of Rights is mainly a set of rights that sets forth limits to those who would try to remove freedoms. Freedom of speech, belief, movement, assembly, etc etc are rights.
Positive rights are those rights that do not place limits on organizations to trample on your freedoms, instead, they are rights that place a demand on you to provide something for others.
Thus, I do not believe that health care, education, social security, and all the other programs of the welfare state are basic human rights. I believe they are priveleges that a society can bestow, but they are not rights, because they put man into conflict with one another, and require someone to provide a service.
To take an extreme example of the conflict of positive rights: Imagine that health care is a basic human right, and there exists a society with no doctors. A government in this society who did not provide doctors, would be violating the fundamental individual rights of the people. If no one wanted to be a doctor, they'd have to *enslave* a portion of the population to avoid being in violation. Thus, to live up to their call to enforce these rights, they have to reduce the freedoms of others. That IMHO disqualifies health care from being a right.
In a less extreme example, there aren't enough doctors or medical resources to take care of everyone, so medical care is expensive, and the government much seize onerous portions of the national income to provide this right.
With freedom of speech, assembly, et al, there is no such conflict. The government does not hire anyone to "provide you with free speech", it merely has to not restrict your speech.
Your right to free health care or free education potentially requires a violation of my individual rights, which ultimately requires the exercise of political power, which ultimately means the exercise for force, violence, against me. Your right to free speech does not. The government need not beat me up to provide you with free speech. If I do not initiate force against you, no force is initiated against me.
On the other hand, if I refuse to give up my property, my time, my money, to ensure you get your free health care or education, the government can come and by force, put me into jail.
I am not arguing against the need to have a literate society, and to provide education for people, I simply do not believe they are fundamental *rights*. Or atleast, they aren't the same as individual rights. Perhaps you could argue based on some social contract, that to be a citizen of society, and be allowed to vote, you agree to provide certain services to all citizens.
But health care, education, welfare, are *services*, not rights. Services are provided, bought and paid for, our rights aren't.
Semantics, I know, after all, free speech is maintained by courts, military, police, etc, but if everyone would simply leave each other alone, they would maintain their rights. On the other hand, education, healthcare, etc can not be maintained by "leaving everyone alone". Whether you admit it or not, there is a fundamental difference.
Think of it as the difference between information goods, and physical goods. Information goods are "nonrival goods". If I copy program X, it does not stop you from using program X. On the other hand, if I use your car Y, you cannot simultaneously use car Y.
Our negative rights are not "rival goods" The exercise and existence of mine, do not require any burden on you, any preemptive act of violence. On the other hand, positive rights are "rival goods", because when I see doctor X, there is a preemptive force in place that assures you pay a part of my bill.
If "doctor X" could be cloned like software, we would not have scarcity, and the conflict of positive rights wouldn't exist. But we haven't gotten past scarcity yet.
Negative rights don't have a scarity of supply.
