During Ronald Reagan’s 1966 campaign for governor of California, Republicans established the so-called Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

It was proposed by State Republican Chairman Gaylord Parkinson to help prevent a repeat of the liberal Republican assault on Barry Goldwater that laid the foundation for Goldwater’s trouncing in the 1964 presidential election. Just as Nelson Rockefeller and his East Coast cronies had branded Goldwater as an “extremist” who was unfit to hold office, so candidate George Christopher and California’s liberal Republicans were leveling similar personal attacks on Reagan. Party liberals eventually followed Parkinson’s advice, and the rest is history.

Source

All the Republican candidates have invoked the name of Ronald Reagan numerous times.  It seems they all want to be associated with the Reagan legacy.  But most have forgotten Reagan’s eleventh commandment.  It is one thing to contrast one’s record with that of another candidate.  it is quite another to resort to character assassination and that is precisely what some have done.

The pundits are even worse and they don’t seem to realize the risk they are taking.  The quote above illustrates why Reagan was unwilling to speak ill of his Republican opponents.  He stuck to issues because he understood that it was important that Republicans won in the end the constant assaults in the primary process made that less likely.

The lesson holds true today but you wouldn’t know it listening to the pundits.  I have to admit that I have been guilty as well.  I’ve made my views on John McCain, for example, very clear.  But as I said in my last post, I have to think about the possibility that McCain will be the eventual nominee.  What do I do then?  Can I reasonably blog in support of McCain at that point after all the negative posts I’ve written about him?  I’m not sure anyone would take such post seriously but I’m quite sure some would use my older posts to argue in favor of whoever the Democrat nominee is.

Therein lies the problem.  I need to tone down my rhetoric against McCain, Romney, et.al. in favor of arguing for my candidate.  I think others need to do the same thing.  otherwise we all contribute to making the Democrats’ job easier and our nominee’s job tougher once the nominees are chosen.

This, of course, leads to the question, what are our rights and where do they come from?  I do not intend to deal with the source of rights in this post.  Rather, I want to examine the nature of rights and what might reasonably qualify as rights.

There is a clear difference between rights defined by the Declaration of Independence and those “rights” claimed by many today and that difference is readily apparent.  Those rights put forth in the Declaration of Independence require no positive action beyond the state protecting such rights.  Each person is responsible to make the most of their individual rights but others have no obligation to assist in their fruition.  It has been said that your rights end at my nose, meaning your rights make no claim on me.

Rights such as the right to a job, health care, etc. can make no such claim.  If I have a right to a job that means someone else must provide that job.  If I have a right to health care it logically follows that someone else must provide that health care.  Such rights confer upon me the “right” to impose upon another.  That is, my right must necessarily interfere with the rights of another.

I submit that such a “right” is nonexistent.  Indeed, such rights are a logical contradiction because they necessitate the violation of one “right” in order to ensure another.  If that is the case then there is no such thing as a right in the first place.  Rights become simply assertions that can be enforced.  Such assertions are referred to as rights but they do not meet the criterion to be rights.

The rights presented in the Declaration of Independence suffer no such difficulty.  This is so precisely because these rights make no claims on the actions of another.  The only claim beyond the individual is the responsibility of the state to protect the individual against the infringement of their rights by another.  My right to life may not be taken away except through due process of law but no other individual is require to take any positive action to ensure I live.

Rights as the Declaration of Independence presents them may accurately be called rights because they meet the criteria of rights.  My rights do not extend to forcing others to take actions beyond the state obligation to protect me.  A genuine right does not allow me to force another to give me something.  Otherwise it would not be a right because it would automatically infringe upon the rights of another.

When someone claims that something like a job or health care or housing are rights, the only accurate gauge to determine the validity of that claim is whether such a right allows the infringement of some other right.  If it does, it is not a right.