Coyne: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!

Valid points. Mandatory immunization provides another example:

…Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.

That’s arguable, but it’s not crazy. To be sure, ordinarily we leave the balancing of risks and returns to governments to figure out. The exception in law is where rights are involved. And of these the right to life is surely the most fundamental.

Again, let’s compare the Nova Scotia case. I don’t get to take a stroll in the woods for a couple of months, at a time of severe fire risk, versus I am put permanently at risk of getting killed, to save car drivers a couple of minutes off their route – which it won’t even do! 

These are the sorts of distinctions conservatives used to be able to make without difficulty. What happened?

Source: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!