This forum, sponsored by the Vermont Workers Center, invited all Windham County candidates for state Legislature to discuss “health care and human rights.” Nine candidates, including prominent incumbent Democrats, sounded off on their views on health care in Vermont.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Dennis Hill
It’s always interesting to hear groups like the Vermont Workers Center conflate the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, with life, liberty and the ‘right’ to happiness. What they have conveniently forgotten is that our Constitution provides individuals the right to own and protect personal property too.
The conflict between the ‘pursuit of happiness’ and the ‘right to happiness’ is, by definition, irreconcilable, no matter how tortured the logic, and those who persist in the conflation of the premise are securing nothing but conflict.