Add Some Zip to Your Web Site!

Add Some Zip to Your Web Site! Have your own web site? Pick up a web sticker to direct your readers to information on legislation, congressional votes, candidates, elections, and more! Just choose your favorite sticker, and copy the code for easy installation.

E-mail this story to a friend Have comments? Send them to the editor. Printer Friendly Version Subscribe for Free!

Where do our rights stop? A popular saying holds that they stop at the end of the next person's nose. But, judging from the never ending stream of demands that assault us every day, it appears that everything on our personal and collective wish lists have now become rights, without limit.

Do we have a right to say and do anything we want, to unlimited health care, prescription drugs, subsidized housing, to "do drugs," to prevent others from using drugs, to have health care plans pay for a sex change operation or prescriptions for Viagra, to a free college education, to receive "equal pay" for "equal work" (however that may be defined), to send your children to the school of your choice, to smoke or prevent others from smoking, to force our opinions or beliefs on others (as in Christian, Muslim, atheist, hedonist, or environmentalist)?

If our rights stop at the end of the next person's nose, does that include their pocketbook? Stealing may be illegal and immoral, but whether or not it is acceptable seems to depend on who does it and why, and sometimes how. For example, is it acceptable for someone to steal food to feed their family but unacceptable if they steal money to keep from losing their home in foreclosure?

Taking money from others by force or at gunpoint or by embezzling it from an employer is a crime, but how many people condone appropriating someone else's dollars through taxation? Probably everyone, to some degree. But, isn't that the problem? That is, the degree? Too often, in matters of taxation, right and wrong depend on who has the power to tax or whose ox is being gored.

When did we move from the freedom of speech guaranteed by our Constitution to freedom of speech only if it is politically correct according to some particular group, as in African- Americans, Hispanics, women, gays, liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, Jews.....you name it? Our treasured freedom of speech seems to be acceptable only so long as it conforms to some special interest group's definition of expression they consider "correct."

There always seem to be good and sufficient reasons to impose our individual or collective will on others. Both sides of the political spectrum find plenty of justification for pressing their values on everyone else. Abortion is about a woman's right to do what she wants with her body or it is murder, depending on one's personal beliefs. Those on the left say that the Boy Scouts are wrong to prevent gays from being scout leaders, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution guarantees their right to make such a determination. But, that hasn't stopped the ACLU and others who oppose the Boy Scouts' policies from attempting to force communities around the nation to punish them in various ways, such as pressuring donors, including local governments, to stop giving them money or to cancel long standing privileges to use certain community facilities, such as parks or school grounds.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2