Wait. Full Stop.

The NYT is making sense. Stop the world, I want to get off...

Internet Access Is Not a Human Right

FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with it. Though the demonstrations thrived because thousands of people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as they did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize and publicize everywhere, instantaneously.

The article veers off later into the "responsibility" of those that make and maintain internet hardware and related systems to insure that their devices work for the betterment of mankind, etc., but the fundamental point is valid: claiming that [transient piece of hardware] is a right is doomed to fail, whereas the broader concepts backing up that [transient piece of hardware] will endure. It's the big reason that the whole "The Second Amendment means you can own a musket" argument is so infuriating.

Those evil dead white European-descent males that wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights didn't just take a look at what was commonly available on the the street and toss them in. They didn't say that people had a right to use a printing press to say whatever they wanted - or to shout things out in the town square; they recognized that it was the right of the individual person to speak their mind without fear from governmental retribution that was the key issue. They didn't think that people should be allowed to own one specific type of firearm - and bear in mind, during their lifetime they watched significant advances in weaponry with the advent of the rifle.

The underlying human right - that which cannot be granted by a government, simply recognized - that is the fundamental issue here. We have a natural, inherent right to speak our minds, to provide for our families, to live our lives without undue intrusion by the governing body. This is the bedrock principle upon which this country was founded, and yet we've been arguing over semantics for most of our nation's existence. With gun control efforts stretching back to Reconstruction; with wealth redistribution efforts starting in the Depression; to the new catchphrase of "[insert important good or commodity] is a human right" - all of this takes away from the intent of the Bill of Rights to delineate controls on the government.

Which, of course, is their intent all along. Designate something a "right", and there's an implied obligation of the government to force - at gun point, remember - society to embrace this "right". RomneyObamaCare comes readily to mind. Health care, despite our best wishes, is not a "right". We're free to seek our living in order to afford it; but health care as an institution is goods and services provided by another entity. Saying that it is a "right" means that we all need access to it - which in today's parlance means that the .gov should force providers to give it to us for free if necessary.

And what does the .gov get out of this? Very simply, they get more power. They provide this "right" to those that have not earned it, and then those that have not earned it become increasingly dependent on the government for more and more "rights". The government, by dint of being the body that enforces equal access to "rights", acquires more power through laws designated to facilitate each new "right". That they happen to pick up more and more fans of "give me something because it's my right" who will vote for the proper lizard is a happy side effect.

The only right we truly need is the right to be left the hell alone.

That is all.

Thanks to Yankeefried for sending the story in!