One aspect of right wing politics I've never really been able to square is who owns your body, so to speak. I'm sure I could put this better, but if property rights mean anything, it would seem to me that your body is the one property you should have total ownership over, to the point of deciding on your own when to end your life. But the right wing seems quite opposed to it.
There's majority rule but also minority rights. At what point should I be compelled to help you do something I have a problem with? Or on the other side, at what point am I preventing you from doing something that you want to?
To put it more plainly.
If I'm against abortion should tax money be used to pay for it? If I'm against abortion what if I use tax money to blare "Abortion is bad" from loud speakers across the country 24/7 ?
There are certainly far ends of this - I'll put you in jail if you attempt to kill your self - that are more clear but even there talk to someone who has a firm belief in property rights and I think they'll be able to make a cogent argument that's more then a rationalization.
Property rights is a primary focus of libertarians, not the right generally.
In the West, the right believes that there is a natural moral order to reality, which generally does not include abortion or suicide. For the most part, this position is rooted in the Christian belief that all humans are made in God's image, so killing innocent humans is to spit in God's face.
I will attempt to explain, and I describe myself as "right wing" although it may be more accurate to call myself "romantic conservative":
It is typically useful to ask yourself the following questions about any version of society:
- Can you keep your stuff?
- Can you do what you want with your stuff?
- Who has the weapons?
- Who won't be punished for making you do something?
Right wingers tend to go on and on about "freedom", but through examination of these four questions it becomes clear that they don't mean it. They don't want you to keep your stuff if you acquired your stuff through theft, so they support a legal system that can prosecute "thieves", meaning that they decide what's "your stuff", and you can't keep it if they decide it's not yours. They don't want you to become trans, abort babies, start anti-national propaganda outlets, etc. so you're not allowed to do whatever you want with your stuff. They only want people who aren't criminals to have weapons, meaning that there are some people who shouldn't have the option to revolt if they want to. They are mostly unwilling to punish police officers even for major transgressions, so they want the martial caste to be immune to consequence.
It is clear that all of the talk about "property rights", "liberty", and "freedom" is social posturing in order to appear more morally unimpeachable than their perceived opponents. Most people have semi-authoritarian views about the society in which they wish to live, and right-wingers are no different. Some of these ideals are noble in nature, but the actual implementation of these ideals in reality still requires authority prosecuting violations of rules regarding possession, trade, etc.
Therefore, there's no real need to be surprised when "property rights" don't extend to your own body per "right wing" politics; "property rights" isn't actually a meaningful principle among most right wingers, it's merely an ideal that they wish to use as the basis for certain portions of the authoritarian society in which they wish to live.
(Another example is loud music; if you own a stereo (your property) and your lot (your land) and you play loud music (your speech), most freedom-loving conservatives will do whatever they can to get the damn music off.)
> They don't want you to [...] start anti-national propaganda outlets
Distinguish between not wanting people to do something, and not wanting people to be allowed to do something. Isn't a more common position "I wish anti-national propaganda outlets would go away, but I don't think the government should make them go away, since an intact First Amendment is way more important"?
Not among voters, no. The majority of US right wing voters would happily shut down <pro-Communist, anti-Christian, etc.> sources using the government. The "I don't like what you say but will defend to the death..." principle is a luxury position most often held by educated centrist right-wingers.
In the US the "right wing" is not a monolith, in fact is more from an ideological stand point the right today is more diverse in political opinions than the left, as the left has cast out many of their more moderate members (i.e the Blue Dogs)
Conservatives do not really hold you own your body, conservatives tend to believe in various types of religion which puts your body subservient to a higher power or god. Thus is immoral to kill yourself. It is not a property rights argument, it is an ethical argument.,
then you have the libertarian right, which do use property rights and self ownership and many support assisted suicided, the ones that do not oppose governmental assisted largely because what is being perceived to be playing out out in real time (rightly or not) from Canada whereby the state has an incentive to direct people to suicided and maybe even force / Coerce them to "voluntary" dying either as a goal of the program, or just agents of the state abusing their positions. In either case state level suicided is seen as huge opening for abuse where even if you think people have the right to end their own life, trusting government with that power is not something they want to support.
I think what you're describing would better be described a libertarianism/classical liberalism than as right wing. Libertarianism is regarded as right wing, but not everything right wing is libertarianism.
