It's My Right

"I deserve better." We live in a world that tells us a lot about what we deserve. We deserve more pay our coworkers tell us. We deserve a break McDonalds tells us. We deserve health care some of our candidates for president tell us. The term is means "to merit." When we say "You deserve X," we mean, "There is something you have done or something about you that merits X." The original idea in the word meant "be entitled to because of good service," and that original intent still holds. We understand "deserve" to mean "entitled."

This moves closer to the idea being expressed. "Deserve" or "entitled" never carries a sense of privilege. It is not your privilege to receive that which you deserve. Instead, it is your right. You've earned it; you ought (in a moral sense) to receive it. For instance, if you work for a person at an agreed wage for an agreed time, it isn't a privilege to receive the pay. It is a right. You are owed that pay and to fail to receive it would be theft.

Now we're at the dilemma of "deserve." If the term refers to something to which we have a right, it is not merely incorrect to fail to receive it. It is immoral, perhaps even criminal. That is, if it is true that we all deserve health care (as an example), then it is not merely advisable that we receive it. It is mandatory. A serious injustice is being perpetrated on us as long as we don't have it. And what, in the case of health care, qualifies us for this right? Apparently it's the fact that we're human. Human beings have certain inalienable rights because they're human. Health care is one of them. But if that is the case, then it is not merely an injustice that some Americans don't have health care; it is a vast injustice that every human being on the planet who, by right of the fact that they're human, is entitled to health care doesn't have what they have the right to have! The horrors of it all!

Oddly, the human right to health care doesn't seem to have come up before recent times. That's strange, isn't it? I mean, it it's a right because we're human, shouldn't it always have been a right ... as long as we are or have been human? "Oh," someone might say, "but health care itself is fairly new." And that may be true to some extent. So ... to what future right are we now entitled because we are human?

Still doubt it? Consider today's favorite American pastime. It used to be baseball. No longer. Now it seems like our favorite pastime is litigation. We will sue for anything. You all know about the woman who sued McDonalds because they served her hot coffee. The nerve of them ... serving coffee hot! If she had only known, she never would have put it where it would spill in her lap. Someone is going to pay!! Maybe you've heard about the woman who is suing Victoria's Secret because when she was putting on a thong underwear a decorative medal piece flew off and hit her in the eye. You see, she has a right! Nothing should ever go wrong with a piece of clothing ... ever! Someone is going to pay!! You probably haven't heard about the man here in Arizona who is suing the high school because it rained at the graduation. Seriously. "It ruined my jacket. And they knew it was going to rain!" No one seems to be saying, "But ... you knew. Why didn't you bring an umbrella?" You see, we have rights! Bad things don't just happen. There are no unfortunate accidents. And I am not going to pay for it! Someone else is. We have the right to have perfect weather and hot coffee that doesn't burn and medicine without the remotest possibility of mistake. You can't provide it? Fine! Someone is going to pay! I deserve better!

You see, the thing just keeps piling up. And it's all predicated ... on a lie. There are really quite a few rights that humans have because they are human. "A break" is not on that list. Neither is health care. You don't deserve a new Mercedes because you are a human being. Nor is it a mandate on society that no human be below the poverty line. There is no "human right" that says, "No human should make less than X." It's just not there.

We really like the language of entitlement. It gives our wishes greater weight. The problem is that rights carry with them a moral responsibility. If, as the Beastie Boys argued, you have to "fight for your right to party", you will also need to fight for everyone else's right to party and consider it a moral black eye if someone does not yet have their right to party. And the same is true for every other right we wish to claim. Perhaps we would do well to examine things a little more closely before we pile them in the "rights" category. Being a member of the human race has its privileges, but we should be careful about what we declare we deserve.