By JORDAN STANCIL
November 24, 2009 07:40 am We hear a lot these days from conservatives who claim special insight into the minds of the Founding Fathers and tell us there is no "right" to health care. I believe that Americans not only should have but already do have a right to health care, and that this right is established in the Declaration of Independence. That document lists, as everyone knows, "certain inalienable rights" -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What is the inalienable right to life? It is the right to self-preservation, and it implies that the means necessary for self-preservation cannot be kept from any individual, or granted to some individuals and not to others. If these means exist and are being kept from you, you have the right to take them because that is the only way to realize your right to life. Think that's radical? Well, you're right. And if you don't like it, you can take it up with the author of the Declaration himself, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson applied this logic to the problem of economic inequality in pre-revolutionary France. He was appalled, while serving there as a diplomat, by the contrast between the landless poor willing to work and the wasteful rich, who, in the name of private property, created exclusive hunting preserves out of land the poor could have used to sustain themselves. To solve this problem, Jefferson wrote, societies "must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded" from possessing land. "If we do not," he continued, "the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed." Jefferson was clear that his doctrine meant that individuals could assert this fundamental right to survival over and above the claims of private property: "Every man who cannot find employment," he wrote, "but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent ..." Jefferson wrote these things while America was still an agricultural nation, long before the miracles of modern medicine, but the logic behind our nation's doctrine of basic rights still applies. The link with health care is clear: Every American has a right to life, to self-preservation. No one can deny that in our world, timely access to health care is necessary to make that right meaningful. Nor can anyone deny that our current health care system does not provide that access to all our citizens. In fact, health insurance companies routinely deprive American citizens of their inalienable right to life in order to protect their own profits and executive salaries -- exactly like the aristocrats of old who locked up huge tracts of land for private game preserves while others suffered. The government has the duty, based on Jefferson's own doctrine, to fix this situation; if it does not, individuals retain the right to find some other way to exercise their inalienable right to life. So next time someone tells you that health care reform is "socialism," ask them if the Declaration of Independence is socialist, too. About the author: Jordan Stancil is a native of Grayling. He currently teaches courses on the history of political ideas and on American politics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. About the forum: The forum is a periodic column of opinion written by Record-Eagle readers in their areas of interest or expertise. Submissions of 500 words or less may be made by e-mailing letters@record-eagle.com. Please include biographical information and a photo.
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