Sadly the concept of rights has been lost among many Americans to the exclusion of the essential and basic rights. In our pursuit of a right to a home, we give up our liberty to keep what we earn as government moves to repair the damage of giving others the means to a home. We lose life at the most innocent level to have the right to choose well after the choice of abstinence was already declined. Over and over again we give more ground on the declaration’s basic rights of human individual sovereignty to allow for some marginal right.

But are these marginal “rights” actually defined properly as rights. The term right is where the deception and confusion lie. It is easy to understand the pursuit concept of the right to pursue happiness, because pursuit is defined easily as a personal endeavor. So, even though we often don’t understand happiness as understood by the signers of the declaration and as understood by Jefferson, we can understand that it is up to us to achieve it. Life and Liberty are as difficult to define as Happiness, but even more difficult to understand with a faulty definition of a right.

Take the right to Life in the declaration. Who grants life? We have a right to live and none can take from us our life without trespassing the natural law of human rights to it. Still, who grants to us the right to live? Is there a resulting government agency in charge of assuring that the right be granted? We do not receive food by assurance, birth quotas by mandate, or any other aspect of the granting of life. On the issue of life, government has only been commissioned to punish the seizure of life from one by another, but it does not grant the means of creation and maintenance of life.

Look at Liberty. Government must prevent the seizure of liberty from one to another without due process and just cause. It does not, however, enforce that one take liberty. If you may but will not choose to do something for yourself, government does not enforce that you take liberty and choose it and all other things. It would cease to be liberty and become merely diversity. It would be absurd to suggest.

Yet, it is this definition of right that we talk of marginal rights. You have a right to choose, so the means of the choice must be provided. You have a right to life, so you must wear your seatbelt. You have a right to work, so a job must be provided. You have a right to a home, so it must be provided. You have a right to transportation, so it must be provided. You have a right to education, so it must be provided. You have a right to health care, so health care must be provided and you must choose it.

Forget arguing whether each is a right or not, it is the definition of right that is faulty. It is not a definition in line with the American concept of rights as in our founding. It is a definition not inline with history beyond our culture. The sly definition of right in modern times means a providence and not pursuance. Providence and pursuance are mutually exclusive—unless one means that I need to pursue the providence of others. If I must pursue the providence of others than how is it a natural right?

I can pursue the retention or liberation of rights as the founders did in the revolutionary war or as the Union did for the slaves of the south or as Moses did by the hand of God. But I cannot call it a right that I have to request providence of it from another. It would not be a right; it would be a concession.

If we have a right to health care and then it must be provided, by whom is it provided. It is conceded by a politician and provided by the confiscated result of another’s labor through his or her taxes and the loss of the value of his or her savings through inflation as the inevitable debt is monetized.

So, the virtue of the “right” to health care is to exclude the natural true rights of our founding. Life may be rationed by bureaucracy. Its pursuit may be thwarted by shifting one’s resources by force. Liberty is traded for the providence of the “right”. If you want of get it yourself or don’t want it, you have no choice. If your pursuit of happiness leads you to risky behavior or to a trade-off of security for some other desired goal, you cannot choose it when providence of another “right” is forced. You have no liberty to choose to be charitable when your labor is confiscated to the concession of another’s “rights”. Your family’s life, liberty, and happiness are at stake when your wealth is confiscated irrespective of your needs.

We must reject any form of involuntary health care, provided health care, and the naming of it as a right under the fallacious definition. Rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness among others, by they are up to us to achieve and up to government to assure. A “right” defined differently excludes our true rights and is oppression.