Why health care isn't a right

Rush's monologue on the difference between rights and wants. (The only problem is his contention that "rights come from God." They don't, of course, since there is no God. There is only people's idea of God. Rights come from what governments allow them, plain and simple. It's just common sense, however, that one person's rights don't come at the expense of another. A woman has the right to have a baby, but not if she can't afford it and makes me pay to feed her kid, pay for its doctor bills, and so on.)

RUSH: Rights come from creation. Rights come from God.

CALLER: So the Congress is god!

RUSH: In their minds.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: The White House is god in their minds.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: Liberals, in their minds are your god, are your nanny. They bestow rights upon you. That's why they don't like the Constitution. The Constitution clearly says that rights coming from God, and they're not all that complicated.

CALLER: Is there anybody in Congress, in the Senate, even His Majesty himself who will acknowledge that, who will even acknowledge that the Constitution says that?

RUSH: Well, it's the Declaration that says it. It's the Constitution that spells out what government cannot do.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: I think it's a crucial question, because we're at a stage here in our nation's evolution where the left has really done a pretty good job of trying to make everybody think they fit into a group of victims somewhere. Ergo, we're working on a "passengers rights bill." Where did that come from? Well, the passengers rights bill comes from the fact that airlines will sometimes leave you on the airplane for four hours on the tarmac before going to a gate or after leaving a gate, and they won't let you off because they're concerned about a number of things. Passengers have complained. Sometimes it's been eight hours on the plane on the tarmac.

So you got a piece of legislation to fix that, make sure the airlines can't do that, and you call it the Passengers Rights Bill of 2010, 2011, and it spells out what your rights are as a passenger. The attempt here has been to put as many people as possible into groups of victims. The reason for this is so that the great elected leaders in Washington can act as the solvers of problems. They can act as the people who fix it all. They make you a victim of something, and then they come along and say, "We're the ones that are gonna make it safe or fair" or whatever. "We're gonna get even with those who have victimized you!" It's insidious, because the more people who buy into this whole notion that they're victims of something, it's usually of the country. They're a victim of some aspect of this country.

Racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, corporatism, whatever it is, government gets to come along and say, "We'll fix it. We're the referee," and that's supposed to make you say, "Oh, good. I'll turn my life over to you, then. You will protect me from all of these predators out there like Walmart and McDonald's and whoever else it is that is endangering your life, the food that you eat or what have you." So they've set this up and it's been going on for years. It's a battle. Government equals justice! Government equals good! Government equals wonderment! Private sector equals pain! Private sector equals crime. Private sector equals predators! "Private sector is where everybody who wants to get you is. The government is where everybody who wants to protect you is," and that's how they've set it up. In the process they have taken initiative away from people; they have taken ambition away. It's much easier to blame some entity, a faceless entity for your failures than it is to blame yourself. Especially when you got some politician who's gonna come along and punish them for making you a failure.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This might be a wise, opportune time to revisit something. This whole notion of rights. 'Cause people do run around, "I got my rights! You can't take it away from me! I got my rights," and it has boomeranged. It has exploded, and everybody -- well, a lot of people -- has a misunderstanding of what is a right. How would you define it. If somebody came up to you and said, "I'm confused. I don't know what a right is." How many of you would say, "Well, it's something the government allows you to do"? If you did say that, you couldn't be more wrong. A right... Remember, now, especially by virtue of our Declaration of Independence: "We are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights; among them, life, liberality, and the pursuit of happiness."

Those three things are enumerated in our Declaration. Those three rights encompass so much. Pursuit of happiness. Right to life. Liberty. There's a lot there. Those are things. Those are things that cannot be taken away from you. A right is something that no man can take away from you -- and if someone tries, then you are being violated. Now, the US Constitution, this is an opportune time to remind you again in the Obama administration view of it, and he himself has said this. He has a guy in his orb by the name of Cass Sunstein, and Cass Sunstein and others have led the intellectual thinking that the Constitution really is nothing more than negative liberties. Negative liberties. The Bill of Rights. Well, what's in the Bill of Rights?

Well, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to associate.

Where's the negative here? Well, that's tricky. They don't look at the Constitution the way you do. They look at the Constitution as an obstacle. They look at the Constitution from the prism of being in power. They look at the Constitution as "negative" because the Constitution tells people in power what they cannot do. They cannot stop us from practicing religion. They cannot stop us from speaking, particularly political speech. They cannot stop us from free association. And that's what they don't like. That's why they call it "negative liberties." That's why FDR said, "Let's have a new Bill of Rights! We want to spell out positive Bill of Rights from the standpoint of what government can do" they say "for" you, but it really means "to" you.

So when you have people like leftists, liberals, Obama, Constitution is an obstacle. They want you to believe that rights come from them, that Obamacare grants you certain rights (that, by the way, the Republicans want to deny you). That's the way it works. And what are these rights? Do you have "the right to affordable health care"? Think about it. Do you have the right to affordable health care? Well, naturally, you don't. But how many Americans believe they do? This is where this law has been found unconstitutional. The government has mandated that everybody have health insurance -- and if they don't, that they pay a penalty. The Constitution is clear. It's in the commerce clause of the Bill of Rights.

You cannot do this. The government cannot require that everybody have something, and by the same token they cannot require that we don't do something! They cannot mandate it. States can (auto insurance, all that) but the federal government can't. There's a reason it's set up this way. It's to keep the federal government from becoming omnipotent and omnivorous and so big and powerful that you can't escape them. Now, you might like the idea that affordable health care is a right. But somebody then's gonna have to do define affordable. Who gets to define that? Is affordable you only have to pay a hundred bucks a month for it or affordable means, "whatever you can pay, you get the same thing that everybody else gets no matter how much they can pay"?

How do you define this? There is no such thing as a "right," not only to affordable health care, there's no right to health care, period. Just as there is no right to a house. Just as there is no right to a car. You were not created... Tell Thomas Jefferson he had a right to a car but he never got one. They didn't exist. This is not what people had in mind. This is not what rights are. Rights are not wants. Rights are not desires. Rights involve basic humanity, the way that we are created and the way our humanity must be respected by others. Now, as we all know, throughout the history of the world, human rights have been violated left and right. You want some names?

Fidel Castro. Hugo Chavez. Hu Jintao. Mao Tse-tung. Josef Stalin. Adolf Hitler. Vladimir Lenin. Mikhail Gorbachev. Idi Amin Dada. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Any mullah, any Islamist cleric is violating human rights somewhere along the line. Militant Islamists. You know, not mainstream. You know what I mean here. The point is that people who want to deny you your human rights are all over the place. The whole concept of American exceptionalism has been that that hasn't been the case here. The history of human existence is one of bondage, torture, prisons, poverty, injustice. Throughout human existence that has been the lot of most people. That has been the way they lived.

But not here.

For the first time ever in human existence, the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence, our founding documents, create a country where America is an exception to the way human beings have been treated throughout history. It's not that we're better than anybody. It's not that we have better DNA. It's not that we're smarter; it's not that we're chosen. It's none of that. That's not what exceptionalism means. We're the exception to the rule is one way of looking at it. Some of us believe we are exceptional people. To the extent that we are it's only because we've had more freedom than anybody else has had to realize goals, ambitions to whatever degree of effort we want to apply.

It's been up to us. So you don't have all kinds of rights that Congress or the Senate or the president bestows upon you. There is no president, there is no human being that can proclaim a "right" to affordable health care. I mean, Obama has done it. Does it exist? Will it ever? It's impossible. They mandate everybody have an insurance policy. If you don't, you pay a fine. (clapping) "Yes, that's right, Mr. Limbaugh! That will lower prices for everybody by increasing the numbers of people in the pool!" Right, okay. We're gonna mandate every one of you New Castrati people have a gun.

"It's not the same thing, Mr. Limbaugh!"

Why?

"Because guns kill!"

That doesn't matter. I have the power as the federal government. You can make me go buy an insurance policy or put me in jail or fine me if I don't, right? I'm gonna pass a law and I'm gonna tell you you have to have a gun.

"On what premise, Mr. Limbaugh?"

To reduce crime.

"Reduce crime!"

That's right, Mr. New Castrati. Take a look: The cities that have the strictest gun control laws have the highest crime rates.

"Such as, Mr. Limbaugh? What are you speaking about?"

Washington, DC, your golden orchard. New York City. Wherever you look. The point is, this is irrelevant because a federal judge named Vinson in Pensacola has said that the government does not have, within the powers of the Constitution, to require every citizen have health insurance. So I could not pass a law, constitutionally, requiring you New Castrati people and everybody else to have a gun. The difference is, when I'm told that, I say, "Okay, fine. Can't do it." They've just been told that their health care law is unconstitutional. Their reaction is, "Screw it. We're gonna keep on." That's a violation of your rights, if you want to get down to the nit. In our country, ignore the Constitution, ignoring the law, your rights are being violated like you can't believe, under the guise, under the guise of affordable health care for all as a right. You are being bamboozled.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, the seat belt question is easy. "Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Limbaugh, there's a mandate you use seat belts, the federal government requires you to use seat belts when you're driving in your car." Yeah, Mr. Castrati, but they don't mandate that I buy a car. I would have to have a car before I could be mandated to use your precious seat belts. But they cannot make me buy the car. So keep trying, folks. You're gonna bomb out. Keep trying to trip me up all you want.