First healthcare, now homes: The un-American twist of responsibilities to rights

OPINION:

Obamacare took root and spread because Democrats had moved toward socialism and Republicans had given up characterizing healthcare as an American’s responsibility and instead allowed it to be narrated as a right, a human right — an allowance the left picked up and joyfully twisted to mean a “taxpayer-funded” right.

And now the Democrats are trying the same with housing.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Democrat, introduced the “Unhoused Persons Bill of Rights” that would take money out of America’s defense to pay for the provision of the homeless. According to her resolution, the homeless would be given the “right to uninhibited access” to parks, trains and subways and other transportation facilities, sidewalks, uninhabited buildings, public bathrooms and more — basically, to any public space with room to spare.

A “right.” A “right” to move freely, sleep soundly and take over completely.

The resolution also makes clear the homeless are entitled to “livable” wages, low-cost housing and healthcare, the internet and whatever technology is needed to facilitate their access to the internet, and to conduct their panhandling activities wherever and whenever they desire.

No law enforcement. 

No police removal.

Nope. The homeless, Tlaib’s proposal states, will be granted complete “freedom from harassment,” so they might walk, live, sleep — defecate, do drugs, steal — as they please. That goes for private properties, as well. The resolution protects the homeless from “banishment” from private property because such “banishment” would constitute a violation of the “fundamental civil and human rights” of the homeless person.

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This is what happens when Democrats are allowed to change the narrative of responsibility to right.

When Barack Obama was using his presidential perch to move the country left, left, ever the more left, and as part of that leftist movement, insisting on Obamacare because healthcare was a human right — that healthcare “should be a right for every American,” as he said in 2008 — and when Republicans didn’t counter that insistence with the argument that healthcare may be a human right, and access to all for health are may be a constitutional protection, but that taxpayer-funded healthcare was not a right, and was utterly un-American — well, then, that’s when a firestorm of socialist-driven rights, rights, rights began sweeping across the nation.

If healthcare is a human right — then isn’t food? 

If healthcare and food are human rights — then isn’t housing?

If healthcare and food and housing are human rights — then isn’t education?

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Obama. then-President Biden. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. All these Democrats then went forth and multiplied the socialist redistribution-of-wealth Obamacare policy by calling for free college, free child care, free groceries. 

Compromise on the Constitution once, expect to compromise on the Constitution a thousand more times.

This country was founded on a democrat-republic concept of limited government, where politicians serve the citizens primarily by protecting the rights and liberties granted to each individual by the Creator. God may have created individuals to want food and shelter and good health — to need food and shelter and good health. But God didn’t create individuals to get their food and homes and healthcare from taxpayers. He also didn’t create some individuals to live on the streets as homeless and others to live in mansions. That’s called choice; that’s called hard work and persistence and financial planning and responsibility.

It goes without saying that most homeless people have mental issues — else why would they choose to live on the streets? But using tax dollars so they might continue to live on the streets isn’t helping them. It’s saying they’re less than human and enabling them to escape treatment.

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The proper way to treat homeless is for individuals to donate to the agencies and experts who actually treat them and provide for them; for the government to enforce the laws of civil society by making sure the streets and public areas are clear of dangers to the citizenry — such as drug-addicted homeless, such as aggressive panhandling homeless — and to uphold the laws of the nation by treating all equally.

That means if laws exist that limit how working-class and home-owning members of society might use public spaces, then these same laws and limits should apply to the homeless.

Tlaib wouldn’t open her residence to the homeless and give up her bed to the homeless or allow her fridge to be emptied daily by the homeless. She shouldn’t expect, or demand, Americans do that, either.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.

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