Is happiness a right? That sounds good, of course, because who doesn’t want to be happy? And who doesn’t want someone else to be in charge of making it so?

But a little thought shows how complex that question really is. Who gets to define my happiness? How responsible am I for my neighbor’s happiness?

And what is a “right,” anyway?

The answer to these questions shows the fundamental difference between the United States and many other countries. Here’s an example:

“The United Arab Emirates is not leaving the cheerfulness of its citizens to chance, appointing its first minister of happiness,” CNN reported. “Ohood Al Roumi was sworn into the post this week, one of eight female ministers in the Persian Gulf nation’s 29-member Cabinet.”

UAE is not the only country with a governmental department devoted to happiness; Venezuela, which is currently starving itself to death through socialism, has a Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness.

Why is this the government’s responsibility? In their view, it’s because all things flow from the government. According to the UAE prime minister, “The new cabinet focuses on the future, youth, happiness, developing education and combating climate change.”

Here’s what the UAE government doesn’t focus on: human rights, civil liberties, the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the free market or entrepreneurship.

“Beneath the faade of glitz and glamour, a far more sinister side to the UAE has emerged showing the UAE as a deeply repressive state where activists critical of the government can be tossed in jail merely for posting a tweet,” Amnesty International wrote in a report last year.

There’s torture, Shari’a law, the disappearance of whole families and religious persecution. But aside from the UAE being a terribly unhappy place, there’s the question of whether happiness is a right.

In the United States, we see it a little differently. We don’t see happiness as a right; but we do see the pursuit of happiness as a right. In the first instance, government has a duty to deliver something. In the second, government has a duty to get out of the way.

It’s a fundamental difference, and it’s playing itself out now on our political stages. On the Democratic side of the presidential primaries, we hear about what government ought to deliver to the citizens.

On the Republican side, we hear more about what government ought not to be doing (with the exception of Donald Trump, who is following the Democratic script).

Two important points to be made here. First, this is the real question of our day, transcending elections or Supreme Court nominations.

Writing in the journal First Things, Texas A&M professor James R. Rogers contends, “That the ‘pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right – one that cannot be given away – and that governments have been tasked to protect it suggests a relationship between government and humanity’s moral ends in tension, if not in outright contradiction, with modern liberalism.”

The second point is that happiness simply isn’t something government can guarantee.

It’s something that comes from within.