Even before Grassley Knoll arrogated the word "predator" in referring to government, as Thomas Frank reminds us today, forgetting perhaps that, if not the government himself, he's an agent, I had decided that the predator designation for people who exploit their own kind was a slander on the creatures whom nature has designed to sustain themselves via predation. So, for a while, I settled on "parasite" to describe individuals who weaken but don't actually kill their hosts. More recently, I've settled on "deprivator" to define people who aim to deprive others of things they don't even want for themselves.
Come over the jump and I'll explain.
At first glance, it seems rather a harsh judgment to assert that those who deprive others of the necessities of life are depraved. Perhaps that's because we've subconsciously accepted the assumption that the benefits provided by society have to be deserved--at least after the first few months of life. But that's a preference, not a logical premise. If the human species is to survive in the state to which it has currently evolved (a single species in which each individual expresses unique characteristics) then social support is a pre-requisite, not an option or an entitlement to be earned. In other words, social support can't be conditioned on some predetermined behavior or aptitude of the recipient. Which, of course, is why the social structure outlined in the Constitution obligates the agents of government to provide equal support as needed.
Moreover, while developmental conditions, including the size of the population, might reasonably limit the extent and nature of such support (dirt roads, for example, were the norm for a long time, even after they were surveyed and laid out by public bodies), that individuals might actually be deprived of their rights was specifically considered and rejected by the framers of the Constitution. That the term for behavior being ruled out of bounds in several of the original Amendments is deprivation only became known to me in the last few days in the context of that Ohio farm family suffering the unwarranted deprivation of their property and the security of their home.
Deprivation isn't just a condition that results by happenstance. The deprived are persons (natural or artificial) from whom something private has been taken. How the agents of deprivation are to be referred to seems an open question. As so much else having to do with the human rights referred to in the Bill of Rights, the focus of attention is typically on the recipient victims of the behavior, rather than the agents. Which may well account for why we don't normally think about who's doing the deprivating. Deprivate is definitely a word (even though most spell-check programs don't seem to recognize it. Deprivator is questionable. But the relationship to private seems particularly important to highlight, since it's privacy that's being nullified.
Of course, the right to privacy, not having been specifically referred to in the enumeration of human rights, has had to be content with its standing as "implied" and open to question even though the right to own property that's distinct from one's person has been at the forefront of judicial thinking for a long time. Perhaps the emphasis ownership of one's person was muted in the discussion in deference to the fact that at the time of its adoption the Constitution assented to the ownership of some persons by someone else. People owning themselves was clearly a sensitive subject. And so we still struggle with the perception that a person's right to sustain his/her own body and not suffer the deprivation of the necessities of life is less honored than the right to acquire and accumulate material things, even at the risk that others are deprived. Indeed, the necessities of sustaining life are rationed according to an individual's acquisition of the frills. As the debate over health care reveals, if a person's got money, he gets to live; if not, he gets to die quickly.
Thought it's tempting to cite this reality as an example of a materialistic attitude which values things more than people, that's not quite right because it ignores who's actually responsible for people not being able to access the necessities of life. In a sense, private property--i.e. the exclusive ownership and use of material resources and assets--is to blame. Not because the concept of private property is wrong, but because the obligation that goes with that right, to recognize it in others as well, is being ignored. Respect for private property is a social benefit and if some individuals claim it for themselves and reject it for others, then they are basically anti-social.
One could go a step further and insist that the right to private property implies an obligation to share. But, given the natural bounty of that portion of the planet that hasn't yet been despoiled, it would be sufficient if derpivation were brought to a halt by simply preventing the deprivators from following their anti-social inclinations. That the most vociferous adherents of private property rights seem determined to deny those very rights to others as undeserved is almost impossible to explain, unless we conclude that the deprivators are simply depraved and their depravity is revealed in their relationship to material things. Rather than accumulate in an excess of greed, they merely aim to deprive others of what they need to survive; perhaps in an attempt to make their own lives more significant.
Perhaps we should ask some of our Republican friends what they get out of being deprivators. Why deprive people of their right to live?