Back when President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, tried to force government-run health care on Americans as a right, libertarian Lewis Napper wrote an inspired piece of work he dubbed “The Bill Of No Rights.” It spread like wildfire on the Internet after a Georgia state lawmaker sent it to friends.

Napper’s name was lost in the electronic shuffle, and the lawmaker, Mitchell Kaye, ended up getting the credit for the masterpiece. I uncovered the mystery of authorship five years later while working at the online magazine IntellectualCapital.com.

This week, when President Obama signed a national health-care system into law, is a fitting time to revisit “The Bill Of No Rights” and the story behind it. Here’s what I wrote for IC:

Lewis Napper, a self-described “amateur philosopher and professional geek,” found his libertarian muse one day in 1993 while driving home for lunch from his job as a computer programmer near Jackson, Miss. The inspiration surfaced as he listened to a radio news report about President Clinton’s proposed national health-care plan.

As the chatter about “this right and that right” in the health-care arena increased, so did Napper’s frustration. What makes Americans think they have the right to any government-backed health care, he thought to himself. Or for that matter, what makes them think they have the right to any of the goodies distributed by a government that has become far too intrusive.

And then it hit him. All those misguided defenders of big government had perverted the intent of one of the founding documents of American democracy, the Bill of Rights. Within 15 minutes upon arriving home, Napper had composed his own addendum to the Bill of Rights just for those folks. He dubbed his satire “The Bill of No Rights” and forwarded it to a few friends.
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