A Bill of NON-Rights

Mark Vakkur

[in response to an email sent out by a conservative friend]

We, the Sensible, who know we must not take what is not ours, break what we can't fix, or say things that are not true, hereby demand that our leaders reflect the common-sense morality we all learned (but some of us forgot) in Kindergarten.

Let's set a few things straight. We live in the greatest country in the world. Our life expectancy at birth is twice our great-grandparents'. Diseases that once almost wiped us out are now rare or eliminated. We have a functioning central government, courts that work, and freedom from a war on our soil for almost a century and a half. We can say pretty much anything we want and enjoy greater freedoms than anyone in human history.

But those benefits are not free. They did not fall out of the sky. They will not continue forever unless we pay our dues. We have taken the idea of Not In My Backyard way too far. We need to grow up.

Here are our real Bill of NON-Rights:

1. You don't have a right to the benefits of a civil society if you're not willing to pay for them. If we are healthy, employed, and prosperous, it's not because of our efforts alone. Yes, we worked hard, but we used safe, funded schools, reached using roads and vehicles kept safe by strict government regulations. We financed our educations with below-market interest rate loans made available through government subsidies and guarantees. We homeowners enjoy government-subsidized housing; a third of our mortgage interest is paid by the government through tax deductions. Those of us who served in the military received not only government-financed education and support during our training, but the down payment on our first homes, courtesy of the American tax payer. I believe we should pay something back to the society that gave us so much, ESPECIALLY in a time of war. I don't think we need a tax cut as much as we need well-paid teachers, policemen, and firemen, reliably inspected food, and body armor for our troops.
2. You do not have a right to abandon the least among us. Those who are disabled or unemployed did not get that way because they are shiftless or lazy. For every welfare mom trying to scam the system for a few extra bucks for her kids, there are a hundred corporate executives or Congressional lobbyists scamming us all for billions. Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff stole enough money to fund Head Start for a century or provide healthcare for all our children. Gutting our schools and denying healthcare to poor children to finance tax cuts for the rich is morally wrong. It is inconsistent with the teachings of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Perhaps instead of loudly talking about religion, we should quietly live by its principles. Christ, after all, was not known as the Prince of Preemptive War.
3. You do not have a right to be shielded from liability. For every frivolous lawsuit, there are a thousand acts of corporate negligence that go unpunished. Consider that Exxon has yet to pay a dime for the Valdez oil spill.
4. You do not have the right to use government to impose your religion on others. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is not part of our heritage and history, at least not the first century of it (it was put on our money during the Civil War). The brave patriots who fought on Bunker Hill and endured the privations of Valley Forge were not lesser men because they didn't have God on their coins. We are not better because we do. Our country did just fine until the words "under God" were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthyist hysteria of 1954. For those who believe in a wrathful God ready to strike us down if Kindergartners don't invoke his name each day, consider that we never lost a war before this, but have since lost two.
5. You do not have the right to lie about the present. If you must lie, don't capitalize and memorialize your dishonesty; phrases such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, No Child Left Behind, the Clean Skies Initiative, Compassionate Conservatism, and Mission Accomplished are ugly enough in small caps.
6. You don't have the right to lie about your lies. If you said "imminent threat", "stay the course", or that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were soulmates, own up to it and move on. (Please inform the Veep we have C-Span and video cameras.)
7. You do not have the right to lie about the past. This country was NOT founded on the belief in one true God. Our founding fathers, horrified by the bloodshed provoked by religious fanaticism on the Continent, purposefully and deliberately separated church from state. Children of the Enlightenment, most were Deists or Universalists. They abhorred the idea of a state religion. They mentioned God only twice in the 85-essay Federalist, not at all in the Constitution, and only twice, indirectly - "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" - in the Declaration of Independence.
8. We do NOT have the right never to be offended. So those offended by the sight of a burning flag (as I am) should not waste precious legislative time trying to ban it. Those who are offended by evolution or sex education should not try to silence our teachers. If you find some teachings offensive, home school your children, but don't deny mine the right to an accurate, truthful education. If abortion offends you, don't get one. If you don't like condoms or birth control, have as many children as you like, but don't give a government bureaucrat the power to dictate the timing or size of my family.
9. You do not have the right to allow fellow citizens to die because of lack of access to healthcare. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege. To claim otherwise means that all of us are only one layoff or one bad motor vehicle accident from ruin. It is economically stupid, leading to huge productivity loss and needless lawsuits, as well as morally wrong.
10. You do not have the right to physically harm other people. All human beings, however Dick Cheney secretly designates them, are people. Water-boarding, sodomizing, or suffocating detainees violates our American heritage far more than any flag burning ever will.
11. You do not have the right to profit from war. I agree with Harry Truman that any contractor who cheats the taxpayer and endangers the soldier by providing substandard services, weapons, or armor should be charged with treason.
12. You don't have a right to a job but you do have a right to a well-funded educational system that provides you with a fair chance of getting a good job.
13. You don't have a right to get a free ride off your employees. You don't have a right to fire half your staff, doubling the work of the survivors, but paying them nothing more.
14. You don't have the right to tell me or my family which language I must speak. If a majority of Americans in 2025 speak Spanish, and their elected representatives vote to change the official language of the United States to Spanish, then so be it. American ideals transcend ethnicity, religion, and language. The language of America is the language Americans speak. About one third (and counting) speak Spanish. Get over it.
15. You do not have a right to revise our country's history. We have accomplished much that is great but have also stumbled badly. Let us never forget that 1 out of 5 colonists were slaves. We speak English only because those who spoke something else were ethnically cleansed. Let us never forget that Texas used to be called Mexico and was invaded because Mexico abolished slavery, or that for African Americans, our country's democracy is only 40 years old.
16. You don't have a right to spend your grandchildren's money, squander their resources, ruin their wildlife, or poison their air. If you pollute, be prepared to pay.
17. You don't have a right to massive tax cuts in a time of war. Freedom isn't free. You cannot spend a billion a week in Iraq while slashing the budget for education, healthcare, and first responders here at home.
18. You don't have a right to say you support the troops if you cut funding for veterans healthcare.
19. You don't have a right to claim to support a war if you or your family members are not willing to fight in it.
20. You don't have a right to start a war, period, unless it is the absolutely the last resort. You never have the right to lie to start one (see #5).
21. You don't have the right to force National Guardsmen to return for third or fourth tours in a war you started if you yourself "worked something out" with the National Guard to avoid the war of your time.

So stop sniveling about having to pay taxes on your dividends or capital gains, get out your checkbook, and pay your fair share. Stop calling your fellow citizens who disagree with you names. We're all on the same team. Let's stop arguing about abstractions and solve the real-world problems that lie before us. Let's leave no American behind.

And if this seems too hard to understand, go ask an elementary school student.