The "Right to" Enslave Others
Nobody has the moral right to own slaves. This is generally accepted in the free world today.
However if slavery is renamed and resold to the public, there is apparently no problem with practicing it. Increasingly in the modern word, governments are forcing people to work for others. They demand payments of wealth to be “redistributed” to other recipients. If people disagree and choose not to be slaves, they will be forced to comply. This means incarceration, further seizure of wealth, and if people choose to defend themselves, this means death.
Modern politicians have redefined the word “rights” to include the right to enslave others (i.e., the right to force people to work for the benefit of others). Since self-sacrifice is an unquestioned “virtue” in many religions and philosophies (even though Kant was trying to defend religion against reason), this is an easy pill to swallow for most—it’s been taught in the public schools all along.
These days it’s common to hear phrases such as the “right to health care,” the “right to work” or the “right to be free from hunger.” However these “rights” all include finding some poor victim to provide this wealth. Generally, they are phrased as a “right to” instead of a “right from.”
The founding fathers of the United States of America had it correct. Rights should be honored to protect people from each other (i.e., individual rights). Since we all have a right to be free from coercion/force and to pursue happiness (not to be guaranteed happiness by enslaving others), they created the US constitution to defend those rights.
Everyone should scrutinize the supposed “rights” in the modern world and check them to ensure that they’re not actually renamed excuses to enslave other people. Any supposed right that requires wealth forced from another person is immoral.
I came across a well-written article about the “right” to health care written by Leonard Peikoff of the Ayn Rand Institute entitled “Health Care Is Not a Right.” It discusses not only the immorality of this supposed right, but also how it would be disastrous in practice.