One of the most confused issues of our day is the understanding of rights. Americans are supposed to enjoy the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and largely what this used to mean is protection from anyone who would take these things away from you. This “protection from” approach is polar opposite from what has developed and continues to develop, an “entitled to” approach. I am entitled to my house no matter how reckless and foolish I was when I “bought” it with no money down. If I’m in danger of losing it, others are required to pay for it through government bail out programs, the very others who acted with caution and chose not to engage in such risky behavior.

Any parent–but even as I write that I realize it’s entirely false because so many parents don’t–understands that if you don’t follow disobedience with consequences, you’re reinforcing the disobedience. You get more of what you penalize and less of what you subsidize.

Bailout responses to the financial crisis is only the most recent manifestation of the entitlement mindset that has been with us for well over a century, but it illustrates the point well. When you penalize virtue and reward foolishness, you get more of the latter. People are outraged at top execs of companies who received bailout money when they subsequently dole out all sorts of bonuses and massive perks. But who taught them that? Who taught them they could be financially reckless and still operate? Who enabled this? The same politicians who wag their fingers. Shocking: people who ran their businesses into the ground are still reckless, even after taking money from politicians. It’s like watching a man yell at his wife, and then turn around and yell at his kids for dishonoring her.

Entitlement rights are the spirit of the age, and like the age they change and morph. What once meant “life” no longer means life, not if it is in the womb. What used to mean “property” no longer means property, not if the state wants it. How is this justified? By appeal to some sort of natural law. This natural law is usually connected to some sort nebulous deity (e.g. America’s god who loves to bless), but the collective good will also do. Horace Mann established America’s education system as an entitlement:

I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable principle of natural law, or natural ethics–a principle antecedent to all human institutions, and incapable of being abrogated by any ordinance of man,–a principle of divine origin, clearly legible in the ways of Providence as those ways are clearly manifested in the order of Nature and in the history of the race, which proves the absolute right to an education of every human being that comes into the world; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all . . . the minimum of this education can never be less than such as is sufficient to qualify each citizen for civil and social duties he will be called to discharge . . The will of God, as conspicuously manifested in the order of Nature, and in the relationship which he has  established among men, founds the right of every child that is born into the world, to see a degree of education as will enable him, and as far as possible, will predispose him, to perform all domestic, social, civil, and moral duties, upon the same clear ground of natural law and equity as it founds a child’s right, upon his first coming in to he world, to distend his lungs with a  portion of the common air, or to open his eyes to the common light, or to receive that shelter, protection, and nourishment, which are necessary to the continuance of his bodily existence. (quoted in Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education)

As much as it is parents’ responsibility to ensure a child breathes, opens his eyes and enjoys shelter, so the government must provide an education to all. What holy book is Mann reading? Natural law. Can I get a copy? No, not unless you’re a Unitarian and make it up confidently. Mann wrote this in 1846, but it remains the driving force behind our morphing conception of human rights and the policy that embodies it. What happens when the government fails to do what it thinks it can accomplish and, say, puts a Nation at Risk? Well, you throw more money at it. And more. Until it costs more per student at the public school for a lesser education than at the private school for a better one. Until there’s a tax, education, and why-the-heck-can’t-you-balance-the-budget-the-budget revolt.

But I digress. Natural law has no foundation, no fixed point of reference, and therefore no brakes. And this is why it is so scary to have human rights tethered to it. Rights are exchanged for entitlements.