Rights vs Entitlements

To the Editor: 
I read a recent letter to the editor on entitlements. It began with some perfectly sensible examples – the right to do what you want with your own property, the right to earn money and do what you want with it, and the right to voice an opinion, no matter how ill-informed. No reasonable person would disagree there.
Then they began getting sarcastic, like the right to believe global warming “science.” Examples became absurd, like the so-called “entitlement” to go into debt and declare bankruptcy, then mocking Christians’ beliefs, and even dared that allowing a child with some medical condition to live because its value to society is measured in government dollars was an “entitlement.”
Finally, the increasingly mocking “entitlements” included stating that NFL kneelers are disrespecting America when it’s merely a protest against police violence.
Let’s address the last one first. We believe Kaepernick’s “take a knee” movement was anti-U.S., and not just against police brutality because that’s what he said it was about.
Now, let’s truly understand this concept of “entitlements.” An entitlement is different than a right. Most of the early examples in this letter were examples of rights.
Rights are enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, the first 10 in the Bill of Rights, which were appropriately posted in the Herald alongside the letter I reference. Rights come from God; the Constitution merely affirms these rights.
Obama is no Constitutional scholar, but one thing he got right was that the document is a charter of negative liberties. This means that it doesn’t grant material things to individuals, but says what the government can’t do to you.
Notice that, since the beginning of the progressive era, amendments to the Constitution shifted from giving rights to people to giving rights to Congress. Many amendments end with, “Congress may authorize this [amendment] with legislation.”
So what are entitlements? Entitlements are granted by the government and are not rights, nor guarantees. For instance, the U.S. Department of Labor issues workplace posters stating to employees, “You have a right to an OSHA inspection.”
Our poor founding fathers never had this “right,” as there was no OSHA then, nor a desire to create one. Their idea of government was streamlined.
Imagine if President Trump eliminated OSHA. Where does the “right” go? Don’t you have a right to an OSHA inspection without OSHA’s existence?
The problem with “entitlements” is since they were “granted” by government, they can just as easily be revoked by government.
Government funds are the typical concept of an entitlement. Democrats “granted” us Social Security, Democrats bankrupted it, and I doubt anyone my age would say seriously, “I’m entitled to this money I paid in,” when there’s none left.
Despite a recent economically illiterate proposal video from Elizabeth Warren, the money isn’t government’s to give. Social Security is a direct transfer of employee’s earnings to others. Social Security has a legally mandated cost-of-living increase built in as an entitlement.
How many times in Obama’s eight years did he deny this money to senior citizens? The right to a doctor and “affordable healthcare” was called a “right” by so many who promoted Obamacare. So why did so many millions lose their insurance, lose their doctors, and now almost everyone’s insurance cost is through the roof? How is something simultaneously a right and taken away from the people?
Wary people understand that if something is deemed an entitlement, it’s not something the government owes Americans, and usually something it can’t deliver in the first place.