Lobbying versus Rights

Paul Hsieh has an editorial out in the Denver Post. It shows how government control of medicine will necessarily turn questions about what to fund and what not to fund into political decisions. To me it also highlights the fact that the only way we can win in the long term is to advocate for principles. The various freedoms and rights are a unity -- they arise from the same fundamental facts about human nature. Ultimately that's the argument we have to make.

That's not to say we can't fight specific battles. We can and we should. Not only to preserve some semblance of freedom in which to make broader arguments, but more importantly to give inductive evidence for why our principles are correct and reasonable. Indeed this is the "virtuous circle" of a true and integrated philosophy: The specific applications are evidence of the validity of the more general principles, and the more general principles shed an illuminating light on the more specific cases. Defending and promoting either advances the whole (as long as we use the correct arguments for each).