Ed Brayton, who sometimes describes himself as a libertarian, calls Rush Limbaugh “bankrupt morally” for “actually argu[ing] that having access to health care is no different than having a house on the beach”—by which he is referring to Limbaugh’s view that you have no “right” to health care that you can't afford, and that while it may be unfortunate that poor people are unable to afford health care they would like, they do not have a right to it.

Limbaugh is correct. Health care is no different than a house on the beach, in this context. You have no more right to health care than you have to a house on the beach. To have a right to health care would mean that you have the right to demand that doctors and nurses take care of you, and that other people pay your medical bills for you. In the conversation with Limbaugh, Shatner implies that health care is a “right” because it is important to people's lives—that without it, people suffer. But, of course, without a lot of things, we suffer. That does not mean that we have a right to have suffering alleviated by the services, and out of the paychecks, of others. To make that claim—to say that “where in my view something is really important to alleviating suffering, then people have a right to that thing” is to utterly obliterate the meaning of the term “rights.” Health care, like a house on the beach, is a desirable thing produced by other people. To get that thing, you must work to afford it and trade for it freely. That is the only moral route to obtaining that thing. To assert that you have a right to that thing is, in the end, to demand that other people labor to produce that thing for you regardless of their will, and we have a word for that. Hint: it isn’t “freedom.”

Brayton has claimed in the past to believe in the classical liberal doctrine of natural rights. That position—which he once described as “”each person should be free to do as they please so long as their actions do not harm another person against their will, take away their equal liberties, or rob them of the fruits of their labors. There is no right to murder or to steal within the natural rights framework for the obvious reason that it deprives the rights of others”—is utterly incompatible with the “positive right” assertion that one has a “right” to health care. If there is, in principle, a right to health care, then one has, in principle, the right to compel others to provide it: the right to take money from people’s paychecks to provide it, and the right to compel doctors to furnish it. And if one has a right to “access” whatever one considers important, then that principle would stretch far beyond health care, into a right to whatever the ruling clique considers worthwhile—at your expense and at my expense. It’s sad to see Ed Brayton, who once argued that the military draft and national service violate the Thirteenth Amendment, now call that same position “morally bankrupt.”

Happy birthday, Joseph Conrad!

I love Donald Boudreaux. His explanations of economic concepts are always accessible, concise, and insightful. His podcast on legalizing insider trading is excellent—and reminds me of a lot of arguments I had in my law school corporations class.

Reason magazine’s Brian Doherty has this article today about the McDonald v. Chicago case. The article quotes me and several others involved in the effort to revive the privileges or immunities clause.

The Tampa Tribune today featured my article (coauthored with Steve Geiseler) on the Florida beach renourishment case:

America's Constitution requires states to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for the use of the public. But what if a state's judges simply declare that a person's ownership of property never existed in the first place? Is the person still entitled to just compensation - or can the state escape its duty to pay by mere say-so?

That's the question the U.S. Supreme Court will consider today when it hears a Florida property rights case with national implications. A group of beachfront homeowners from Destin are asking the justices to reverse a decision by Florida's highest court that erased legal protections that beach owners in Florida have relied on for almost a century

(Read the rest...)

Today I signed an agreement to publish my article, Privileges, Immunities, And Substantive Due Process, in the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty. The article is about the Slaughter-House Cases, and draws from my brief in McDonald v. Chicago. The current draft is still pretty rough, and I’m in the process of revising it now, but you can download it over at SSRN.

Stephan Kinsella adds a new one to the Lew Rockwell Vituperation Watch! Evidently, condemning fanatics who irresponsibly encourage violence and civil war and throw around ridiculous charges of fascism and whatnot qualifies as "one of most disgusting 'libertarian' things I’ve ever read." You can always count on Kinsella (who has never in his life done a single thing to make a single person freer) for thoughtfulness.

Update: LOL, indeed. Kinsella quotes a typical note from his semiliterate fan base. It refers to the United States as an “empire” of “conquered land,” embraces secession, attacks Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and American participation in World War II, and, of course, wait for it...likens Obama to Hitler and Nazism. Knew that one was coming, didn’t you?

Thank you lord, for a world in which people are still free to make such asses of themselves.

Ran across this quotation from Daniel Webster, that says well what I was trying to say earlier about the embarrassing opposition to Obama. Webster said this at the time when the Hartford Convention was being organized, during the War of 1812. Webster was a New England Federalist and very opposed to the War, but he was equally opposed to the Hartford Convention:

With respect to the war, in which we are now involved, the course which our principles require us to pursue cannot be doubtful. It is now the law of the land, and as such we are bound to regard it. Resistance and insurrection form no parts of our creed. The disciples of Washington are neither tyrants in power, nor rebels out. If we are taxed, to carry on this war, we shall disregard certain distinguished examples, and shall pay. If our personal services are required, we shall yield them to the precise extent of our Constitutional liability. At the same time, the world may be assured that we know our rights, and shall exercise them. We shall express our opinions on this, as on every other measure of government, I trust without passion—I am certain without fear. We have yet to learn that the extravagant progress of pernicious measures abrogates the duty of opposition, or that the interest of our native land is to be abandoned, by us, in the hour of her thickest dangers, and sorest necessity. By the exercise of our Constitutional right of suffrage, by the peaceable remedy of election, we shall seek to restore wisdom to our councils, and peace to our country.