Your ‘right’ to free stuff requires a gun to someone else’s head

Published August 1, 2026 8:00am ET



Matter and energy do not obey political declarations. Someone must cut the timber, raise the walls, grow the grain, and haul the water. If a person is declared to have a right to those things without producing or exchanging for them, then another person must be compelled to supply them. There is no third option. 

In the whole of human history, no one had a right to food or shelter. It is a parental imperative until self-sufficiency if they care about their offspring enough to do it. If they don’t, it does not create an obligation that someone else must. 

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