Rights

What, my fellow humans, constitutes a right?

Does a person have a right to another mans property? Does a person have a right to another mans wealth? Do your rights cost other people? Does your happiness have to retract from someone else's happiness?

No. I posit that everyone has the same rights and these rights cost nothing to others.

You have a right to free speech but not to make others listen. You have the freedom of religion but you do not have the power to force it on others or punish those who convert. Because they have the same religious freedom, including the right to convert or drop it entirely.

You have the right to assemble and to associate with whom you please but without the power to force others to assemble and associate with you. Again your rights do not cost or infringe on the rights of another person.

You have a right to own property but not to steal it. You have a right to buy it and not with the coersion of a government agency. It is the same with other properties such as a gun or a vehicle.

So then how does one come to believe in the fantasy of something for nothing, or the ideology of theft by state. People are taught they are somehow "entitled" to another persons income, they are somehow entitled to have others pay for their things, their food, their housing, their cell phone or their medical care.

This type of ideology is like a cancer, the number of demands continues to always increase and never decreases. The ideology that says a person who has wasted all their own money on MP3 players and concert tickets can then demand that the state force those who work for a living to keep them in comfort.

Yes, there are truly needy people in our world, a world that does not reward hard work but punishes and one that rewards those who do not. The truly needy are the ones being hurt the most by the culture of entitlement, which encourages people to do as little as possible.

An entitlement is not a right, it is loot.