Letter: One person’s wish another person’s right

Election year and Iowans reflect on our duties toward society. Reflect on this opinion found in Walter E. Williams' April 21 column 'Are we talking about rights or wishes?”: The bottom line is medical care, housing and decent jobs are not rights at all, they are wishes …. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights?”

Williams exhibits a distressingly impoverished, individualistic, and amoral appreciation of the human person and the common good, from which his parsimonious attribution of rights to others originates. His analysis of the rights to free speech and travel implies no person's rights should ever exact a cost from another person. Doesn't guaranteeing someone's human rights, such as the right to freedom from tyranny, involve some 'inconvenience” on the part of other people in society? Would Williams belittle the sacrifice of countless American soldiers assuring the liberty and freedom of other Americans? Not ethical egoists, would we deem the mere notion of taxation or entitlement inherently unfair, the equivalent of satisfying a more indigent citizen's 'wish” to rip off another who is better off? Safeguarding human dignity and the basic infrastructure of a healthy democratic republic does exact a 'cost” from its citizens. It's simply the price we pay to preserve our basic humanity. The human person - communitarian by nature - and the common good: realities our nation was founded upon do deserve our reflection. I emailed Professor Williams my concerns. He responded: 'Thanks for your observations. You'll absolutely hate next week's column.”

William Mulcahey

Cedar Rapids