Free Republic

What are “Negative Rights”? We all have rights as human beings in the United States. We have the right to attend school, go to college, work to obtain money, own property, and defend ourselves, but where do these rights start to infringe on others’ freedom? Negative rights define our freedoms and our right to have something without interference from outside forces. To define negative rights in the simplest manner, it’s one person’s right not to have another person interfere with their own liberties.

The difference between negative vs positive rights is that one requires action while the other requires inaction. Negative rights are the requirements of someone else not to interfere in your ability to obtain something. Positive rights are a requirement of someone else to provide you with something. You may hear negative rights referred to as “liberties,” and that’s because they are basic human and civil rights stating that no one can interfere with our right to obtain something through trade or bartering. Positive rights are often called “entitlements” because they are things that someone must provide to us, whether we’ve...

DAD, WHAT's UNABHÄNGIGKEITSTAG? "Is that when the thirteen colonies broke away from England?" My ten year inquired out of nowhere at 6 AM German time this morning. "Yeah, why do you want to know, eat your breakfast," I mumbled, too sleepy to be very curious. "Because I am afraid my teacher will ask me, since I am wearing this T-shirt and I'm the only American in the class." With an effort, I adjusted my gaze upward to his white T-shirt. It was brand new. Prominent on his breast was an image of the flag and below that: OLD NAVY FREEDOM...

Consider a few facts: Donald Trump is in the White House, despite winning almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The Senate, the country’s most powerful legislative chamber, grants the same representation to Wyoming’s 579,315 residents as it does to 39,536,653 Californians. Key voting rights are denied to citizens in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other United States territories. The American government is structured by an 18th-century text that is almost impossible to change. These ills didn’t come about by accident; the subversion of democracy was the explicit intent of the Constitution’s framers. For James Madison, writing...

This makes twice in 10 days that a host on MSNBC has openly marveled at the idea that many, many Americans believe their rights come from God and are recognized in the Constitution rather than derive from the Constitution itself. How can it be that this idea is so inexplicably foreign, even accounting for MSNBC’s left-wing bias? They know the percentage of the country that’s religious; they’ve read that not-unimportant bit in the Declaration of Independence about men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; they’ve read a treatise or two on natural law while in college; they’ve...

Here's a completely constitutional gun-control measure Congress should consider: Establish a robust national militia, mandating that every gun owner become a member. Failure to register with the militia should result in serious jail time. In the obvious interest of knowing the quantity and quality of arms available to the militia's purposes, all members should be required to inventory all of their personal arms. Failure to do so should also warrant significant jail time.

One of the oldest notions in the history of mankind is that some people are to give orders and others are to obey. The powerful elite believe that they have wisdom superior to the masses and that they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Their agenda calls for an attack on the free market and what it implies — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, free markets are replaced with economic planning and regulation that is nothing less than the...

One of the problems with positive rights though, which conservatives and libertarians tend to point out, is that in order for them to mean anything in practice, someone else will inherently have to provide the means by which they are given. For example, if you have the right to health-care, then a doctor or nurse will have to at some point, render that care. Either the medical practitioner will have to be paid for his or her rendering of care, or he or she will have to be compelled to render it. This is manifestly different from a negative right...