I was looking through the new Iraqi Interim Constitution, and saw a number of very good things. The document was written by the U.S. and Iraqi politicians, as a temporary Constitution until the "permanent" one can be written and ratified by the elected Iraqi leaders. It even contains language stating it will be thrown out once the permanent one is in place. A complete copy of it can be found here: http://www.4law.co.il/con8304.htm , along with a summary of some of its salient points at the top of the page.

It provides for a lot of rights for the Iraqi people - right to life, liberty, security, etc., independent of religion, gender, and many other things. Bans on torture, involuntary servitude, etc. Hopefully the permanent one will have the same.

But it also contains a few other "rights" that caught my eye. It states that among other things, all Iraqis have the "right" to health care and the "right" to education.

These strike me as being somewhat different from the "rights" we know of in America. Our "inalienable rights" such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are things that no one has to give us - we had them they day we were born. The Constitution merely requires that no one do anything to interfere with them. If everyone leaves us alone, our rights are well secured.

But that's not necessarily true of the "right" to education and health care. By common definitions, the only way you can get these things, is for someone else to do things for you. A doctor to treat you, a teacher to teach you etc.

If you have a "right" to such work, doesn't it follow that the doctor and teacher have an obligation to provide them for you? And if they don't want to provide them, they can be forced to since your "right" is being violated?

Doesn't that violate the doctor's and teacher's right to not be forced into involuntary servitude?

I suggest that such things as health care and education cannot possibly be "rights", since they require others to do things to provide them for you. In fact, we are encountering a fundamental mistake in political thinking nowadays, that can have significant and even disastrous consequences, by maintaining that we have a "right" to the services or products of others.

Debate question: Do we have a "right" to things like Health Care, which is usually provided by others? Keep in mind that if the providers choose not to provide them, they would be subject to punishment for violating our "right".

Excellent post, Acorn.

Your basic premise is how I understand rights: they exist from birth and are not given to us by anyone, but they can be imposed upon or taken away.

By this definiton, health care and education are certainly not rights. In addition, they are not really clearly defined, since every individual can have a difference of opinion about what constitutes "health care" or "education". The terms are too malleable.

Rights are never provided by the government. That is why they are "inalienable". They cannot be taken away, surrendered or transferred. They simply are.

Here is a wikipedia entry on inalienable rights. As the Founding Fathers understood them, these rights were endowed to each person by the Creator. Of course, regardless of the spirituality of the issue, the rights do not come from other men.

I would agree that healthcare and education are not inalienable rights, however, I have no problem with the constitution of Iraq granting them: our US Constitution grants us rights that require others to provide them, such as military defense.

I would also point out that all rights are alienable: I may give up my liberty to receive something in return, I may give up my life to receive something in return. However, these things are MINE and may not be taken without my leave.

I also believe that the earth, and heavens, and all of creation are a gift to all mankind, and each person has a right to their share of the commonwealth. But, I also believe in private property. The rectification for these two seemingly crossed views is the idea of mutual compensation for excluding others for a portion of the known universe. For all practical terms this would mean paying market 'rent' on land & nature to the rest of society (and receiving from society your equal share of the total rent).

Conveniently this allows each person to retain the full 'right' of self-ownership: taxes on wages can be eliminated, as can taxes on the product of your wages, be it capital or wealth.

I don't think so. If you have a "right" to life, does it follow that if you are going to die without a kidney that someone has to give on to you? I don't think so. These rights just means that the government should fulfil these rights in any ways which are resonable possible.

I see rights as merely legal structures, put in constitutions if it is useful to put them there. I don't believe in natural rights. I think that saying people have a right to education in a constitution makes it harder for the government to fail to ensure the provision of such an essential service. This makes it useful to put it as a right.

Amlord:

What makes you think these natural rights exist? In regards to them being God-given, I agree that God doesn't want us to take away the lives of other people, or to enslave them, but doesn't he also want us to help them in whatever way we can? Also, why should legal rights be the same as these "natural" rights?

Be careful about assigning duties to government that cannot be fulfilled. And keep in mind that the only things government can actually do to its citizens, is to restrict or punish them. When a citizen is committing criminal acts, it is right for the government to so punish or restrict. But the idea that government can somehow be a force for good outside of those functions, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the both the abilities and the purpose of government.

The only reason for a government document to cite certain rights, is to give that govt the authority and power to punish those who try to take your rights away. If you are ill and need a kidney to survive, and someone else has one that he could donate without risk to himself, no one is taking your right to life away if he refuses to donate it. And so government has been given no power to force him to do so (i.e. to threaten to punish him if he doesn't donate). An even more obvious analogy is if you are starving while someone else has food. He may or may not choose to give you some. But if he doesn't, he is committing no crime and govt should not be able to punish him. You have no "right" to food, even though you do have a right to life.

One of the basic characteristics of real rights, is that no one has to do anything to ensure you retain them. People merely have to leave you alone, take no action to interfere with your rights, and your rights are secure. And govt should have the power to restrict or punish those who do take action to interfere with your rights(killing you, injuring you, kidnapping you etc.)

The rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, to own property etc. are all rights that can be ensured simply by people leaving you alone. But the "right" to medical care, an education, or even to food do not have that characteristic - to get them, usually others must do something to provide for you. If they choose not to do so, they are in no way committing any crime or infringing on your rights. And so it is fundamentally wrong for government to coerce them into doing so.

There is no such thing as the "right" to health care, or even the "right" to food, even though the lack of them may result in peril or death. Government has neither the power nor the authority to ensure that you live and are happy. It only has the authority to make sure others don't actively hurt or kill you, etc.

You're on your own for the rest. If you can get others to help you, more power to you. But don't try to use government to force them to help you - that's a violation of THEIR fundamental rights, which are just as important as your are.

The government can't literally guarantee the right to life. Murder will always happen. The government can only make its best effort to prevent it. It similar with the right to health care. This just means that the government must do its best to protect it. It does not mean that all else may be sacrificed, however. We might be able to protect everyone's life if we kept everyone locked up seperately from each other, but this is not worth it. In the same way, putting the right to health care in a constitution means that the government should do what it can to ensure health care is provided for everyone, but this doesn't mean it should force people to become doctors. (Not that it needs to; if a certain area or demographic is not getting enough health care it can be subsidized for them. The situation in which the government needs to use force in order to ensure people are provided for is entirely hypothetical.)



Well I would agree that the government cannot do anything if it does not use force. But that doesn't mean the only thing it can do is punish criminal acts. I think it is obvious that it can provide services. Of course, this is funded by tax money gained by an inplicit threat of force, but that doesn't mean that all government action is punishment and restriction.



What about requirements on the government? The right to freedom of assembly, for example, is more a restriction on the government than a power of the government. Giving the right to health care means that the government has to do what is reasonable and in its power to ensure that everyone has health care.



I agree. That is my point.



What are "real" rights? I would contend that real rights are those which have legal authority, and imaginary rights as those which theorists think up.



That is not what it means. I think you might be confused about what the word right means in reference to modern legal documents, such as the Iraqi Constitution.



Obviously there is a right to health care in Iraq. There are also places which guarantee the right to food as well.



What do you mean by "authority"? Legal authority? I think what the government has legal authority to do depends on the legal code you are speaking of. I can't think of any other meaning for "authority".

And no government currently has the power to ensure that no-one hurts of kills you. Many are able to reduce this to a minimum, but none has been able to stamp it out.



I don't believe in "fundamental" rights.

I agree. And it does so, as governments must, by punishing (or threatening punishment, backed up by force at hand) for those who commit or want to commit murder.


Unfortunately your statement is painfully true here, too. Once government declares there is a "right" to health care that must be provided by others, it takes upon itself the power to punish or threaten those providers if they do not provide. Alternatively, it takes on the power to take money from its citizens (again under threat of punishment if they do not yield it), and then use the money to contract with the providers. Here the providers' participation is voluntary... because the coercion has simply been shifted to the taxpayers. For purposes of this discussion, a distinction without an important difference.

As with any right, government can do nothing but coerce and threaten. The difference between a real right and a mistaken one (health care), is that for the former the govt threatens the criminals who deserve punishment, while for the latter the govt threatens and coerces law-abiding citizens who have done nothing to deserve it.


Unfortunately that is exactly what it means. Once you assign government the duty to ensure everyone has health care, you create the situation in which government MUST provide it for every single case that comes up - thus removing the patient's own incentive to get it for himself while weighing the costs and possible impacts on other parts of his life. Why buy insurance, if the govt will "give" you health care? And why should a doctor try to limit his costs when he knows the govt will pay him as much as any other doctor? After all, the govt can't possibly have the resources to check up on every claim, every item on the expense sheet, get second opinions on ever minor diagnosis, etc... unless the government becomes as massive as the entire population itself?

In fact, if the govt has the duty to provide health care, then there is NO LIMIT to what may be asked of it, until the time 100% of the people are in perfect health. And since that will never happen, there will be NO limit to the expansion of the part of govt tasked with providing health care.


Well, we agree on something else, thank God. But I am curious: it is not worth WHAT? Not worth the cost of all those jail cells, plus the payment for the guards, cooks, laundries etc.? Or not worth the basic violation of the people's right to liberty?


THis confirms the point I made above. Sure, the govt need not force people to become doctors. It can merely force people to pay and pay and pay, until enough others see it profitable to become doctors voluntarily. Again, govt's only means to do anything, is through force and coercion... and here we have yet another case where it is coercing law-abiding citizens who did nothing to deserve being coerced.



Such situation are in no way hypothetical, but are very real. And, unfortunately, numerous. Would you be able to send your son or daughter to a better college if your tax bill weren't so high? But just try not paying it. But on the other hand, next time you come down with the flu, and know it costs a couple hundred (if your insurance doesn't cover it) to see the doctor and buy the medicine, you might decide to gargle salt water, take Tylenol, and sweat it out for a few days... and then send your kid to that better college, since you also saved by buying a cheaper major-medical policy that cost $60/mo instead of the $450/mo for the policy that pays for every last sneeze, hangnail, and superdrug.


Grimly true. It can also punish non-criminal acts, as I have described above. And by doing so, it can and does violate basic human rights. EVERY time.


False. The best it can do, it coerce others into providing services, or coerce others into paying extra for services they wouldn't have otherwise.


Bingo.


Correct. Some govt action, in the cases I have outlined above, is merely distribution or sale of stolen goods obtained by that coercion.


Adding the phrase "what is reasonable" does two things, and both are bad. First, it imposes no limit whatsoever, since the definition of what is reasonable varies greatly depending on who is in power.

And Second (and far worse), it violates yet another principle of good government: the idea of Rule of Law. When govt is confined to matters basic enough to be defined ahead of time ("Congress shall make no law... restricting freedom of speech", to give one example), then people can plan in advance what they can and can't do, knowing how government will respond in 99% of cases.

But if you try to assign government a task as complex and involved as Health Care, so complex that you have to throw in a phrase like "what is reasonable", then you have created a branch of government that must decide each and every case according to separate merits, rather than leaving those decisions to the people on the scene. Not only does this expand government even more hugely and take the decisions out of the hands of the people most involved, but it also makes it impossible to make plans for the future based on known rules and principles. You have created a "Rule of Men"... the form of government most consistently proven to be the WORST of all possible types. The people making the decisions now are, in fact, dictators.


If a law is passed saying you have the right to such-and-such, then it has the requisite legal authority, correct? What if the law says you have the right to imprison your neighbor because he happens to be black, and force him to work on your farm? Some states had such laws a few hundred years ago. And yet nobody has EVER had a real right to do that, since it violates the neighbor's fundamental right to freedom - a right he had simply by virtue of being a human being.

"Legal authority" has nothing to do with your rights. One of the basic characteristics of real rights, is that no one has to do anything to ensure you retain them.


That is exactly what it means.


It is not I who is confused. The people who wrote the Iraqi Interim Constitution are the confused ones. As I have pointed out many times now, a "right" which violates others' fundamental rights, is no right at all. Calling it a "right" doesn't make it one. And assigning government the power and authority to force it to be one, is merely a recipe for disaster.


Obviously. And more importantly, neither do the people who wrote the Iraqi Interim Constitution. If they had an appreciation or knowledge of fundamental rights, they would find it impossible to exercise the kind of govenment intrusion into such personal and individual matters as health care and education. And this mistake will live to haunt them... and will doom the government they created, to endless strife, expansion, and oppression, once they realize the vast, unaccountable power it grants them over their subjects.

Little-Acorn:

I think first I should explain to you why I do not believe in fundamental rights. The moral theory I believe in is consequentialism. I believe that given a choice between mutually exclusive actions, we should chose that action which given our information has the highest probability to produce the highest amount of net good results.

The reason I chose this theory is as follows: First, it seems like good and bad consequences do exist. I think we would all agree that health care and eduction are good, and people being murdered is bad.

In any given situation, the decision which improves the world the most is the consequentialist one. In other words, the choice which produces the highest amount of net good (good results minus bad results) is the best one. Any moral law, therefore, which contradicts with consequentialism tells us to make the world worse. Assuming human welfare is the main good end, if we do not take the consequentialist path we are necessarily worsening the lives of our fellow humans and ourselves.

Therefore rights should only be put into a constitution if doing this will likely produce net good consequences. A theory of fundamental rights contradicts with consequentialism, and following such a code tells us to make the world worse.



Really? Would you be just as happy living in a country which forces people to take certain jobs as one that has an income tax?



No-one deserves anything. Life is not fair. That policy which is most likely to produce good consequences is best.


Then what did you mean when you agreed with this statement:

?



Again, giving everyone the right to health care does not mean that the government must provide it for every single case that comes up. I think that the best system of health care is one in which everyone gets insurance provided by the government, but the right to health care does not mean this. It could mean that the government pays for those who can't afford health care, for example. If people who can afford it don't buy it, the right to health care does not mean the government has to provide it for these people. In the same way, the right to life doesn't mean that the government government has to rescue people who do stupid things to put their lives in jeaopardy.



Its not worth the first, I don't think the second exists, but most importantly it is not worth the lack of ability of everyone to live out their full human potentials. I think freedom is important, I just don't believe in fundamental rights.



Just as private health insurance doesn't have to cover these things, neither does public health insurance. If a government plan doesn't cover frivilous things, nothing is stopping anyone from getting supplementary insurance for such things.



I agree that any services the government provides are funded by money taken by force. This includes the military and police. But that doesn't mean these services are not provided.



The phrase "what is reasonable" must be added to the right to life as well, as you agreed to above. It would not make sense to lock everyone in different cells to prevent murder. All that rule of man stuff applies to this too.



I would say that such a right is as real as a right can ever be. It is an immoral one, but neverless a legal right, with all requisite legal authority. No moral authority, however, and I would say that no right has any moral authority. No-one has a right to freedom from slavery, but it is highly immoral to force someone to work for you.



I'm not sure I follow. Do you not have to be protected from murderers?



How can they be confused about a word in their own constitution? What if they wrote executive branch in there, except that it had different duties than the executive branch of the US? Would they be wrong or confused? You and the writers of the Iraqi Constitution are just using two different definitions of "right". It is just a semantic problem.

You say that putting the right to health care is going to cause all kinds of problems, but its only going to cause those problems if "right" is interpreted in the way you are suggesting it must be interpreted. There is no reason people are going to think this. Especially because enforcing any right unconditionally is bound to cause disaster.

Iraq has offered free higher education since 1976 and at least offered free health care before the Gulf War. "In the beginning of the 1980's, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Arab world." Do you think it was coincidence Bush suggested (only once) that Iraqis should have free health care two years ago? When Iraq naysayers and cynics (myself included) suggest we'll eventually be unhappy with whatever Iraq ends up doing, since it's a given free nations looking after their interests do not always coincide with the interests of its allies, I doubt we envisioned nationalistic headlines like Creating Iraq In Our Image.

Do we have a "right" to things like Health Care, which is usually provided by others?

Not in a capitalist Republic.

Not in any free country, with any type of government compatible with freedom.

A "right" to things provided by others, is misnamed. It is in reality a coercion upon the providers, or at best a coercion upon people to pay for it, who have done nothing to deserve being coerced. In essence, it is not a right. It is a violation of rights.

Yes I think health care is a right. However, I dont agree at all with the last part of your phrase. Sure, providers would get punished for not providing healthcare, if they denied people systematically. That's true, legally, for almost everywhere in the world (that I can think of, if Im wrong...). However if a provider quit his profession and refused to provide healthcare, I hardly think he would be punished for this. So Im unsure where the problem lies.

Just because this right is dependant on some to provide that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a right. If people have a right to life, it seems obvious to me that then we should try and facilitate that life to a certain extent. That doesn't mean cash handouts for everyone so they can buy a lexus, but rather making sure a certain level of decency is established so everyone has an opportunity to flourish. I think healthcare and education go along with that.

Additionally, you say that people did nothing to deserve "coercion", but I beg to differ. It is the responsibility that one has being the resident of a nation. You don't have a right not to be taxed, er-- I mean coerced. Wouldn't that require dependancy on the government (ie other people) to not coerce you? Isn't that just a ridiculous argument?

I also tend to think of rights as subjective and therefore somewhat meaningless. If all the Iraqi people agree that healthcare is a right, what does it matter to you?

This logic doesn't make sense. Using, let's say, the much-vaunted US "right" to bear arms. You have the right to bear them - and all that is required of government to secure that right is inaction in preventing you from bearing them. Am I right? Of course I am - so far so good.

But to actually purchase one, someone else has to make it, and someone else has to sell it (possibly, but not necessarily, the same someone else). So unless you make it yourself, you have no "right" to bear an firearm that you cannot construct yourself.

The government doesn't have to compel arms manufacturers to make the kind of gun you might want, or compel a store to sell one to you, to secure your right to bear arms, does it? It just has to not prevent those transactions, or forcibly reverse ones that have already taken place (by confiscating a gun you already have).

So, perhaps a way of interpreting these posited right for Iraqi citizens to education and healthcare is that all they do is prevent future Iraqi governments from any citizen from getting access to them.

I will use education as the example, as it seems easiest to explain.

In the context of neighbouring Islamic countries that prevent some of their citizens from getting any formal education at all (I'm thinking the heavy restrictions placed on the rights of women, such as in Saudi Arabia), it is an important thing to spell out the right to education in their constitution, and in just the same sense as the enumerated rights guaranteed by the US education - i.e. government has no right to prevent you from obtaining an education.

The Founders of the USA didn't see education as a right in the sense you define it to be, because in their history nobody had ever really made such attempts to formally restrict access to it, or had suggest it was something that might or should take place. They enumerated the "rights" they saw being violated by the British Empire in the Americas and in Britain. (Remember, most of the philosophers who defined the ideas behind much of the US constitution were from the British Isles if they were from the Americas, and you can only define things you can conceive of.).

That doesn't mean that there are no other rights, just as fundamental and "inalienable" (a stupid choice of word, since they are eminently alienable, otherwise nobody would need to define them because they could never be "aliened"), that never occurred to the Founders as needing to be spelled out because they couldn't conceive of a government system that would try to limit them. (None of them were from, or had ever travelled to, Islamist theocracies, to my knowledge, mainly because such things didn't really exist at the time.)

Even the Founders themselves allowed for this concept, by setting out the process by which Amendments could be made to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.

So in the Iraqi context, a right to education (at least) does not necessarily place any burden on any third party. It just prevents governments from barring access to education to any citizen that wants it.

In just the same way as you yourself have illustrated with your example of the right to life not placing any burden on anyone to provide food beyond the normal limits of the market.

The right to life, though completely dependent on the right to eat, does not force anyone to become a cook, grocer or farmer and provide you with food. It simply says the government has no right to kill you (something that can be weaseled out of anyway - which is why some states have CP, because someone has done something to waive their supposedly inalienable right - surely an impossiblitity unless the convict freely agrees to the procedure - but that's another topic). It has no right to prevent you from eating.

Similarly, a right to education does not force anyone to become a teacher. It just says the government cannot prevent you from going to school because of... well, not for any reason, really.

The market will cater to both, by paying people enough in salary and benefits to make it worth their while. People will become chefs or grocers, because people want to eat and are prepared to pay for it, either directly or through taxation (food stamps for example). People will become teachers, because people want to go to schools and universities and are prepared to pay for it, either directly or through taxation. (And in the Iraqi constitution, which people will be able to vote on at the end of this year, nobody will be able to say that such taxation is illegitimate if it passes because it will contain the framework of that taxation. The Iraqis will get to vote directly on whether or not they want a constitution that has education and healthcare paid for form their taxes - more than most of us in the West have ever been able to do.)

In a wider context, you clearly oppose the idea that there could be rights that the Founders didn't think of, that might be necessary in societies with different histories and cultures than those that made and make America. I have tried to use a different point of view to show that this opposition is more to do with your filtration of your perception of what is or is not a right based on the US Constitution, rather than the situation Iraqis find themselves in today.

But this is, I think, symptomatic of the arrogance-through-ignorance that Americans sometimes show to the world outside their borders that frustrates both Americans and foreigners. Because you look at the world through your own eyes, and you are so convinced of your own greatness (with no little justification, I have to say ), you can sometimes come across as not only arrogant but stubborn. It is not disastrous, but it might sometimes pay dividends to be a little more flexible.

Especially when it comes to disapproving of the way other countries want to organise themselves. Iraq is going to be a self-determining democracy, it seems. Surely that is a good thing? Why are you so quick to rail against the idea that they are not going to be a carbon copy of the USA?

If they want to define for themselves the inalienable right of access to 200-pound toasted marshmallows on Thursdays, in their own country, exercising the new-found freedom to be free - bought at no little human or financial cost to the USA and her allies, as well as uncounted* Iraqi citizens - who the heck are you to tell them that is an illegitimate right?

* not uncountable - the US-led coalition has just decided it isn't going to bother to count them.

Do we have a "right" to things like Health Care, which is usually provided by others? Keep in mind that if the providers choose not to provide them, they would be subject to punishment for violating our "right".

Well I guess this is a good time to point out a supreme myth. There is no such thing as a "free" society. "Inalienable rights" only exists as long as they are allowed, which is totally contrary to what an inalienable right is supposed to be.

Example: Slavery

If life and liberty are inalienable rights bestowed by the creator, how could there have ever been slavery in this country (or any for this matter) Well, if the government and people don't recognize those rights, then they will not exist. And if a right takes recognition by a government and general public, then that right can not be deemed inalienable, since the contrary has been proven. Hence all rights take social recognition in order to be "rights", therefore any privilege can become a "right".

Furthermore, think about your second paragraph. All "rights" are provided by others. How does a government exist with out some form of tax dollars? How does a military? Do you have a right to own property, do you have a right to a military, do you have a right to have police, do you have a right roads, do you have a right to own a business. All of these, from a modern perspective, require a government, which require funds, which means we get taxed, which means there must be some form of coercion to ensure we pay taxes.


How does one become a criminal?? One must break criminal law. Therefore the government never threatens law-abiding citizens other to present consequences of breaking that law and enforcing such consequences if said law is broken. So there would be no way to discern a difference between coercion of a real right and that what you call a mistaken right, because all criminal activity is only criminal due to the fact the government made a law that was broken.

The nature of society is contradictory to the ideals of freedom and liberty. In order to have a society there must rules, laws, mores, norms, etc. All of these are designed to restrict the very freedom that is inalienable. Freedom is chaotic, Order is restricting.

Debate question: Do we have a "right" to things like Health Care, which is usually provided by others? Keep in mind that if the providers choose not to provide them, they would be subject to punishment for violating our "right".

Interesting debate Acorn, thanks for starting it

So far I think something Julian said is closest to my opinion on this:


The most important thing to remember here is that it is really invalid to compare our Constitution, which was written with a 1700's post-colonial mindset, with the Iraqi Constitution which will be written based on the realities of today's world and particularly the islamic world. You'll find common elements, but people have realized there are things the Constitution doesn't spell out that it should. I think that if we were all of a sudden to re-write our Constitution today, you'd have a very different document in front of you.

I really don't see how giving someone the right to health care or education is fundamentally different than saying you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, especially that last term. We supposedly have the right to the pursuit of happiness - does the government guarantee that for us? Is everyone in today's world guaranteed an education, a good job, access to a psychologist? No, they aren't. You could argue that one or all of those things are necessary for happiness. What the government doesn't do is prevent any of those things - they don't prevent people from getting an education, they don't prevent you from finding work, etc.

I think that education is specifically called out in the Constitution for exactly the reasons that Julian specified, because in the Islamic world, historically certain groups have been denied an education.

Other points to add (which I forgot last time) - the right to healthcare is also similar to the right to education I outlined above, in that I believe the Saddam regime was sometimes, er, selective in who got access to it's state-run healthcare (e.g. if you were a party member everything was fine; if you were a Kurd or a Marsh Arab suddenly nothing was available). So again, the constitutional clause in question merely says:


Note that as written in the first sentence of the Article, the constitution does not OBLIGE the state to be the PROVIDER of the security, education, healthcare and social security. It just says that the citizens will have the right to these things. By implication, it is committing future Iraqi governments not to act as barriers to these things happening.
The second part of Article 14 does commit the state to provide prosperity and employment opportunities - for which read a stable and functional economy; nothing to dramatically different to what free world governments generally try to do anyway, (and with enough back doors not to scare investors too much).

Also, we should not get too hung up on the idea that this places some special burden on taxpayers going forward - let's not forget that Iraq is a very oil-rich country, and once the infrastructure is up and running again, it is likely that they will be able to afford to build an enviable state-funded health and education sector (they certainly had very good education, at least until the first Gulf War - meaning the one against Iran) AND have very low taxation, even taking into account any monies the coaliation might want for its *ahem* investment.

Quite right. The reason that particular right was mentioned in our Constitution, is because governments in the recent past (at that time) had actively tried to restrict and eliminate that right, confiscating weapons from the people. So that amendment was enacted to make certain that the government could never do so again.

But who has tried to prevent anyone from going to a doctor and paying his fees to be cured of an illness or injury? Prohibiting people from such actions is clearly NOT the purpose of the phrase in the Iraqi interim Constitution - if it were, it could have been phrased as such. The reason I started this thread, was on suspicion that someone was using this phrase to make it incumbent upon government to provide health care for anyone who asks for it. Exactly such an effort has been under way for more than a decade now in this country. Can it be far behind, for other countries, especially those who explicitly try to pretend "You have the right to Health Care"? That would be like the government providing guns for free to any citizen who asked for one.

People certainly have the right to pay anybody for any service that person wants to provide. They can pay a grocer or farmer for food; pay a barber for a haircut, pay a tailor to make clothes, pay a painter to paint a house etc. But none of those services are explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution. Why was "health care" made an exception?

I would feel a lot better if the phrase had said something like, "The government shall neither prohibit nor compel the provision of health care". Hmmm, that wouldn't cover a Shiite doctor refusing to treat a Kurdish patient, if that goes on. Perhaps they could say (as is said elsewhere in the document) "Medical care shall not be restricted or refused due to religion, ethnicity, gender, residence, etc. etc."

See what I mean? There are many ways in which access to medical care could be protected while still making it clear that government has no intention of providing the care itself. But such phraseology is conspicuous by it absence from this section of the constitution. Simply naming Health Care as a "right", leaves it wide open to be later subsidized (i.e. coerced) by the government itself. And as we have seen ad nauseum in our own government, anything the government CAN do, it WILL do eventually if some politician thinks he can derive advantage from it.

Constitutions are written in such a way that the government has no power and authority except for what is given to government BY that constitution and its amendments. And they also include prohibitions against the government intruding into certain areas (speech, religion etc.)... but those prohibitions are usually explicitly worded as such ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."). As I said, simply naming something as a "right", without further qualifying it, leaves it wide open to massive government intrusion and/or coercion, since one of government's jobs is to actively make sure we have our rights.

It's poor lawmaking at best, and should be done differently.

It's only poor if you take the absurd line that a Constitution does nothing but outline when the government is allowed to intervene in the private affairs of its citizens, which is what the "party line" seems to be in this discussion.

Not even the U.S. Constitution can be defined by this definition. A Constitution does many things, including in various circumstances: describing the formation and operation of government, specifying which 'natural' and 'societal' rights are recognized by the state, establishing the underlying philosophy of the State, defining what exactly constitutes the state in question, outlining the way that lesser jurisdictions are to be incorporated, and creating a formula for changing any of the above.

Just because the U.S. Constitution favours one of these more than the others does not mean that it is the sole function of constitutions in general. They have existed for thousands of years, and hundreds have been written since the U.S. version; and I can't recall any that fits into the narrow straightjacket that you have suggested for them.

You belong to a particular (and quite frankly perplexing) school of thought. This school makes several claims, all of which are philosophical (although some are passed off incorrectly as factual.) Chief among these are that the individual is paramount, and that any collective action taken by government is coercive. (The 'incorrect' belief that I referred to is the one that dictates that governments are inherently inefficient when compared to the market.)

Under this school of thought, you are correct. However, I imagine that it is a rare position to take outside of certain "industrialized" nations. More to the point, it is no more or less correct than any other philosophy; it is just the one most palateable to you. In the real world the people (or their representatives) decide the laws, and THOSE are the rules that dictate how that particular socuiety works. Anything else is just speculation.

Do we have a "right" to things like Health Care, which is usually provided by others? Keep in mind that if the providers choose not to provide them, they would be subject to punishment for violating our "right".

In Canada we do, because the Canada Health Act says that we do. In a more general sense we have no demiurgic right to 'health care.' If we interrogate demiurgic rights though the issue becomes more complex. If we are granted the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for example, then there are some exterior considerations that need to be made. If a child is born with a fatal enzye deficiency, and the parents cannot afford the treatment (nor is any private organization willing to step in and provide it) there are only two interpretations of his death. First, he was born without those rights. The second is that these rights are not guaranteed by the State, they are merely philosophical considerations. In either case the absolutist language and thinking that you are engaged in becomes is exposed as inherently flawed.

So what is the alternative? I prefer the "social contract" approach to understanding government. Individuals enter into a contract with the society, sacrificing certain liberties so that others can be guaranteed by collective organization. In such a model, whatever the society chooses as the various 'clauses' of the contract, so long as the society is free, is fair game.

I think that perhaps it might not have been the intent, or at leat the whole intent. I think a good right to put into a constitution is one which in effect says that it is the governments responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to health care. That means that if the market is not ensuring this, then the government must either influence the market to change, supplement the provisions of the market, or take over funding of care (or even provide it). It does not suggest any path is best, and if the free market is best is certainly allows for this. But is says that if there is a health care problem it is the legal responsibility of the government to do something about it.

By that, then you don't have a right to life, seeing as it required someone else to do things to provide it to you.

And babies don't have a right to have their diapers changed?

Yuk!

I have a fundamental right to marry, yes? That requires someone else to provide something for me, doesn't it? Does that mean the government is required to provide me with a wife? If it was specifically stated in the Constitution that the government was to do whatever it could to see to it that I got married, does that mean that someone would get punished if I didn't end up being married? No. Because the government is only required to to what it can. If you actually take a look at the article in the Iraqi Constitution, you will see the same sort of thing there.



It states the rights, then goes on to state the government's responsibilities regarding these rights.