jims musings

Here in Amer­ica, we have cer­tain rights. Most of our rights are indi­vid­ual rights, as opposed to group rights, where the right is mean­ing­less or non-existent with­out the group.
Anti-discrimination laws, for exam­ple, are an exam­ple of group rights. So is the con­sti­tu­tional right to a jury trial. The Pres­i­dent believes in a right to health care, which would also fall into the domain of group rights. In the case of a jury trial or health care, you have the right to call upon the time and resources of your fel­low cit­i­zens and require some­thing of them– which cer­tainly inter­feres with their indi­vid­ual rights. How­ever, we feel jury tri­als are so impor­tant that par­tic­i­pa­tion and ser­vice on a jury is seen as a duty of cit­i­zen­ship.
There is a story float­ing around on the inter­web about a Ver­mont state rep­re­sen­ta­tive who has a unique alter­na­tive for gun con­trol. (The ear­li­est ver­sion of this story dates from 2000, and I can­not find any infor­ma­tion about Rep. Fred Maslack.)
As the story goes, if a cer­tain piece of leg­is­la­tion passes, Ver­mont cit­i­zens who choose not to own a firearm would be charged a tax of $500. The foun­da­tion of this idea rests on the 2nd Amend­ment and Arti­cle 9 from the Ver­mont con­sti­tu­tion:

That every mem­ber of soci­ety hath a right to be pro­tected in the enjoy­ment of life, lib­erty, and prop­erty, and there­fore is bound to con­tribute the member’s pro­por­tion towards the expense of that pro­tec­tion, and yield per­sonal ser­vice, when nec­es­sary, or an equiv­a­lent thereto, but no part of any person’s prop­erty can be justly taken, or applied to pub­lic uses, with­out the person’s own con­sent, or that of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Body, nor can any per­son who is con­sci­en­tiously scrupu­lous of bear­ing arms, be justly com­pelled thereto, if such per­son will pay such equiv­a­lent; nor are the peo­ple bound by any law but such as they have in like man­ner assented to, for their com­mon good: and pre­vi­ous to any law being made to raise a tax, the pur­pose for which it is to be raised ought to appear evi­dent to the Leg­is­la­ture to be of more ser­vice to com­mu­nity than the money would be if not collected.

Cer­tainly, a bill requir­ing a tax, fee, fine or other pun­ish­ment for those who choose not to par­tic­i­pate wouldn’t stand a chance of pas­sage, despite the con­sti­tu­tional man­date to “pay such equiv­a­lent.” A lien of that sort runs counter to our sense of lib­erty and free­dom.
So why does the health care bill, cur­rently before the sen­ate, have such a pro­vi­sion for those who do not main­tain ‘accept­able health insur­ance cov­er­age… as deter­mined by the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury”? (See “TITLE V–AMENDMENTS TO INTERNAL REVENUE CODE OF 1986″ in H.R. 3962)