What Liberals Believe About Security

Fifth in a series about the liberal perspective on human rights.

Liberals have an expanded idea of human rights that includes a reasonable level of security from the adversities of life.  We feel it is part of the community’s responsibility to its own members, a basic function of our democratic government, to afford protection and safety to people in time of need.  To an extent, conservatives agree with us on some of the basic human rights such as freedom of speech and trial by jury.  They are big on the freedoms “to” do this or that.  They agree that government should protect people, but apparently only from military or criminal attack.    Where we often part company is in our desire also to achieve some insurance and  freedom “from” the negatives life can send our way, negatives like disaster, disease and unemployment.   

Liberals have used government to provide security for people in many ways.  Franklin Roosevelt got congress to pass the Social Security retirement program for senior citizens in 1935.  Seniors went from the most to the least impoverished age group as a result.  It provides a majority of their retirement income to 70% of American seniors, who earned it by paying into it their entire working lives.  Social Security also provides survivor aid to orphans, disability assistance to those with handicaps and unemployment assistance.  Medicaid, for the poor, and Medicare, which people also pay into while they work so it will be there when they reach 65, were passed in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson so that medical care to the needy and the elderly (over age 65) would be assured.  Liberals tend to think of medical care as a human right.  Everyone needs it at some time or other, but the working poor were not getting it with their employment.  Among the elderly, only a very few could afford to pay the mounting medical bills of old age out of their own pockets or the inflated rates private insurers needed to charge the oldest and sickest members of society in order to make a profit.   
 Rather than leave the poor and elderly to sicken and die without hope, a liberal president and congress acted.  Conservatives were mortified.  Conservative icon and future President Ronald Reagan wailed, “It will be the end of freedom in America!” Instead, Social Security and Medicare, which people also pay into while they work so it will be there when they reach 65, remain the most popular and among the most effective federal programs ever instituted, saving, prolonging and improving the quality of millions of lives at a cost far below that provided by private insurers.  Along with Medicaid, they strongly fit Abraham Lincoln’s prescription, “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves in their separate, and individual capacities.”  People’s retirement and health security are every bit as important to them as security against fire, flood, crime or military attack.  They are essential for life, and are necessities people cannot so well secure on their own.  So, just as firefighters, flood control, police and armed forces are part of securing human rights, so are making sure society’s health needs are met.  That’s how liberals see it.

We collectively take action as a society to insure ourselves in innumerable ways against harm.  Think of air and water quality controls, meat inspection, weather satellites, the air traffic control system, workplace health and safety regulations, car, plane, bus and ship safety requirements, inoculations against illnesses, engineering requirements and inspections for roads and bridges, residential and commercial building standards, and the testing of drugs, medicines, toys and consumer goods of all sorts.  Would you like to see any of these protections curtailed?  Liberals support these efforts to provide security for public health and safety.