The Right To Life

Conservatives talk at length about the right to life, albeit mostly in the strict context of discussing abortion.  Though they can be rather content to hypocritically encourage or tolerate things like prison murders or unjust wars (capital punishment, where it is just, does not violate a right to life because it is deserved wherever it is just), in some cases, the conservative worldview does happen to be opposed to taking the life of others on a whim or otherwise outside of select circumstances, such as self-defense or deserved capital punishment--not that even Christian conservatives understand the scope and limited methods of Biblical capital punishment.  Even as they pay lip service the idea of a right to life, however, they are the most prone of all to actively opposing any efforts to make sure that people are do not have simplified access to things that enable them to survive or have a more comfortable life.

Everything from better, more financially accessible healthcare to non-predatory housing to livable compensation--pay that can support a lone working person where they live without them having to work more than one full-time job--is outright attacked by the vast majority of conservatives one might encounter, online or in person.  One one hand, they hyper-fixate on the ramifications if humans have a right to life in certain situations, like those pertaining to the unborn (which is valid if murder is indeed immoral).  On the other hand, even Christian conservatives, who by default have little to no genuinely Biblical components in their worldview, will savagely fight any changes to the cultural status quo that would save, prolong, or improve the lives of humanity in general.

When it comes to things like the aforementioned economic accessibility of fundamental healthcare, things that are not in themselves luxuries which merely enhance the quality of life, there is no less staunch an opposition in conservatives.  Here, they overlook something about the core nature of a right to life, which they tend to speak of far more often than their inversely irrational counterparts who are liberals.  If people have a right to life, they have a right to the things which sustain life, things like shelter, food, water, and at least lifesaving medical resources.  Having a right to something but not the things that allow for it is logically impossible.  What does not logically follow is that the government should meet all of these needs for free or that the government should involve itself in plenty such things at all, but it is inescapably hypocritical to want people to live without actually wanting them to have the things they need to live, like water or food.

Yes, it is fallacious for liberals to think that the government should provide all of these things to all people, much less for free.  Someone has to put work or financial resources into these things, so they could only be free for specific recipients anyway and not totally free in an ultimate sense.  There is also far more to removing obstacles to these things than involving the government, and how someone feels about any of this, conservative or liberal, is epistemologically and metaphysically invalid.  It is still a deep inconsistency in conservative philosophy for something like life to be regarded as good--and really just assumed to be good because of conscience or tradition, as conservatives are by no means rationalists--while the things that contribute to it are demonized.  If human life has value, as is true on the Christian worldview, then things like food or water are not more valuable than humans despite human life hinging on them, as they would only have significance because of their relationship to humans (and lesser creatures).  They would still be far more important than Christian conservatives pretend.