Intro to Meta-Rights

Featuring Canada's M.A.I.D. and Gifts-Based Liberalism

Feb 24, 2024

“Rights” start political arguments and end legal challenges. The dominating presence of rights talk in our collective consciousness can be overwhelming, like some variant of semantic satiation (the phenomenon when saying a word out loud over and over again can make that word feel foreign or meaningless).

“Rights” is the Taylor Swift of words, referenced frequently and defined so lazily it can be anything to anyone, a catchall with no real shape or form.

“You wake up late for school, man you don't want to go
You ask you mom, please? but she still says, no.
You missed two classes, and no homework
But your teacher preaches class like you're some kind of jerk.
… You gotta fight for your right to party”
“Fight For Your Right,” The Beastie Boys. Written by Adam Horowitz / Adam Yauch / Rick Rubin

Blame The Beastie Boys if you must but rights claims were manipulated before their time on MTV and still occur today. From access to the internet to not being offended, newly minted rights are pushed into the public sphere with the fervor of a drug dealer trying to unload the last of his supply for the day. Understanding what is or isn’t a right and how rights derive their value remains critical to our understanding of issues.

Have You Met Meta-Rights?

William B. Irvine wrote about meta-rights in the December 1989 issue of the now defunct journal, The Freeman. 1

“People are generally familiar with what might be called our basic rights. These include our economic rights, such as our right to own property and our right to start a business, and our political rights, such as our right to free speech and our right to life. Fewer people are aware of what might be called our meta-rights. These are rights we have with respect to our basic rights; they include, most importantly, our right to waive or transfer our basic rights.”

Irvine referenced owning a car as a demonstration of the right to property. We are not bound to that car for life and instead have the option to sell, trade or even discard it. From this perspective a right does not derive value exclusively from the act of exercising it.

“Although these meta-rights are less well known than our basic rights, a case can be made that the preservation of our meta-rights is vital to our economic and political well-being; for unless we have the meta-right to waive or transfer our basic rights, then these basic rights are much less valuable than they otherwise would be.”

Why is choice so important? Without it the individual is compelled to act, morphing a right into a duty. There is a difference between a person exercising freedom versus running a predetermined course. As another noted philosopher, G. Michael articulates, being able to opt out or change course in your life is critical to the true value of freedom.

“I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I stopped the show
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don't think that I'll be back again
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man”
“Freedom,” written by George Michael

Americans have the right to vote in elections but they can also exercise their meta-right to not participate at the ballot box. While some may complain that low voter turnout is a reflection of what is wrong with America, a meta-rights position would argue it is actually a greater demonstration of freedom compared to nations that have mandatory voting.

Turning a right into a duty prioritizes the consequence of exercising that right. In doing so we treat man as a means to an end rather than as an end in and of themselves. In other words, we allow an individual to have a right because of benefits for the common good that are anticipated instead of a belief in respecting the inherent worth or dignity of the person.

The Affordable Care Act (known colloquially as “Obamacare”) in the United States was promoted as an attempt to protect the right to health care (or health insurance) for every individual. The reality with insurance of any kind is the viability of the product depends on it not being needed by every consumer of the product. With auto insurance, some drivers must not have accidents so there is enough money in the pool to pay for those who do.

The legislation included an individual mandate requiring people to pay for health insurance or be assessed a financial penalty, thereby undermining the meta-right to health insurance. Not only were individuals treated as a means to an end (universal health coverage), the government specifically needed healthy young people (the good drivers) paying into the system to cover the “crashes” experienced by older people. In this situation Person A was compelled to exercise a right (obtaining health insurance) as a means to the end of improving the life of Person B.

M.A.I.D. in Canada

“Saw a bird with a tear in his eye
Walking to New Orleans my oh my
Hey, now, Bird, wouldn't you rather die
Than walk this world when you're born to fly?
…
Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home”
“Liberty,” Grateful Dead, written by Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia

Prompted by a ~~Grateful Dead song~~ ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada, the Parliament of Canada passed legislation in 2016 allowing for M.A.I.D. or Medical Assistance in Dying. March 17, 2024 was the date that the program would expand to allow requests from patients with psychiatric conditions but (in a decision early this month) it was delayed to 2027. This is Canada so the scale of bureaucracy for M.A.I.D. is predictably staggering and any number of questions have been raised about assisted suicide, who should be eligible and how it is managed.

Beyond all the pragmatic questions there is still the underlying philosophical debate. Does the right to life also have a companion meta-right to give up that life? Yes, says Irvine in the previously referenced piece from The Freeman.

“Even my right to life is more valuable if I have the meta-right to waive this basic right. Those who would deprive me of my meta-right to waive my right to life have done me a great disservice: They have transformed my right to live into a duty to remain alive.”

He reiterated this position two years later, discussing euthanasia in the age of Jack Kevorkian while writing again in The Freeman. 2

“We would be mistaken, then, to suppose that the right to life is somehow in conflict with the right to die. To the contrary, the right to die is an inherent part of the right to life. And anyone who truly values the lives of his fellow human beings will respect not only their decisions about how they live their lives, but also their decisions about how they die their deaths.”

Unwrapping New Liberalism

David Brooks offers a dissenting view on individual autonomy while writing about M.A.I.D. for The Atlantic. 3

“The frame of debate is shifting. The core question is no longer ‘Should the state help those who are suffering at the end of life die?’ The lines between assisted suicide for medical reasons, as defined by the original MAID criteria, and straight-up suicide are blurring. The moral quandary is essentially this: If you see someone rushing toward a bridge and planning to jump off, should you try to stop them? Or should you figure that plunging into the water is their decision to make—and give them a helpful shove?”

Brooks argues there must be an alternative to simply allowing individual autonomy without any meaningful restraint.

“But there is another version of liberalism. Let’s call this gifts-based liberalism. It starts with a different core conviction: I am a receiver of gifts. I am part of a long procession of humanity. I have received many gifts from those who came before me, including the gift of life itself. The essential activity of life is not the pursuit of individual happiness. The essential activity of life is to realize the gifts I’ve been given by my ancestors, and to pass them along, suitably improved, to those who will come after.”

If you enjoyed President Barack Obama’s “You Didn’t Build That” moment then you are really going to love the spirit behind the support Brooks provides for gifts-based liberalism:

You didn’t create your life.

You didn’t create your dignity.

You don’t control your mind.

You did not create your deepest bonds.

These four warrants are anchored by two assumptions. First, the individual cannot achieve without contributions from other people and society as a whole. Second, it is impossible to separate the individual psyche from the collective consciousness. Brooks conveys this while discussing the third tenet, you don’t control your mind.

“Gifts-based liberals know that no purely rational thinker has ever existed. They know that no one has ever really thought for themselves. The very language you think with was handed down as a gift from those who came before. We are each nodes in a network through which information flows and is refracted. The information that is stored in our genes comes from eons ago; the information that we call religion and civilization comes from thousands of years ago; the information that we call culture comes from distant generations; the information that we call education or family background comes from decades ago. All of it flows through us in deep rivers that are partly conscious and partly unconscious, forming our assumptions and shaping our choices in ways that we, as individuals, often can’t fathom.”

It's a Wonderful Liberalism

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. And when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
Clarence, “It’s A Wonderful Life”

If the evolution from infant to rational actor does not occur in a vacuum, the problem with meta-rights is thinking an individual can make intelligent choices wholly independent of the State.

In the 1946 movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”, George Bailey considers suicide while standing at a bridge. It is the same kind of dilemma Brooks proposed when he asked, “If you see someone rushing toward a bridge and planning to jump off, should you try to stop them? Or should you figure that plunging into the water is their decision to make—and give them a helpful shove?”

An angel named Clarence intervenes to stop the suicide, showing George how different the world would be if he had not been around to affect those in his life. However, before Clarence arrives at the bridge he watches George’s life in flashback scenes, allowing Clarence (and the viewer) to see how George’s social experiences and relationships helped form the man he has become. Our mental and moral development is intimately connected to the world around us.

About That Gift

Even if we grant all of the assumptions within gifts-based liberalism, it’s still a pretty lousy gift. Imagine the government as a sugar daddy who has secured an apartment for some sexy sugar baby. The apartment comes with rules; she must make herself available for sex at a moment’s notice whenever the sugar daddy so desires, she cannot have roommates and no other man is allowed inside the apartment at any time. The sugar daddy did not bestow a free apartment because of how much he values the worth of the sugar baby, he provided the apartment with an expectation of how it will benefit him and restricted behavior that would run contrary to his wants. Rights in gifts-based liberalism are not a gift at all; they are privileges with preconditions.

Moreover, the problem that remains is Brooks offers no limiting principle for when society can intervene or to what extent. The gift of rights, like the apartment, is conditional and the sugar daddy, er, government, is the ultimate arbiter over how the rules are enforced and if they should ever change. No matter what personal growth the sugar baby achieves (education, career promotions, 1 million Instagram followers) the power dynamic in her relationship with the sugar daddy will remain the same. Similarly, gifts-based liberalism creates a moving target; as society evolves and values shift, the determination for what restrictions of liberty are justified would also change.

Equally troubling is the assumption that society can better discern truth than an individual. Brooks writes:

“Gifts-based liberals understand the limitations of individual reason, and have a deep awareness of human fallibility. Gifts-based liberals treasure having so many diverse points of view, because as individuals, we are usually wrong to some degree, and often to a very large degree. We need to think together, over time, in order to stumble toward the truth. Intellectual autonomy is a dangerous exaggeration.”

History provides countless examples of failed groupthink, most recently (and perhaps most notably) with the COVID-19 response. Mob rule can dominate discourse and what we might view as a group “thinking together” to reach some sort of omniscient conclusion is often just an individual or several individuals powerful enough to steer the group to a desired judgment.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Boxing

While the debate will undoubtedly continue without an end in sight, this piece cannot do the same. Last words go to Sylvester Stallone.

The 2006 movie “Rocky Balboa” has the titular character unretire for a boxing match against the current heavyweight champion. Our favorite punchy lefthander has to apply for a boxing license. The hearing isn’t going Rocky’s way as the board refuses to license him because of the risk to his safety and potential for death.

Rocky Balboa: Yo, don't I got some rights?
Boxing Commissioner: What rights do you think you're referring to?
Rocky Balboa: Rights, like in that official piece of paper they wrote down the street there?
Boxing Commissioner: That's the Bill of Rights.
Rocky Balboa: Yeah, yeah. Bill of Rights. Don't it say something about going after what makes you happy?
Boxing Commissioner: No, that's the pursuit of happiness. But what's your point?
Rocky Balboa: My point is I'm pursuing something and nobody looks too happy about it.
Boxing Commissioner: But... we're just looking out for your interests.
Rocky Balboa: I appreciate that, but maybe you're looking out for your interests just a little bit more.