Our constitutional rights as human beings are to have the freedom to do as we please as long as it doesn’t compromise others inalienable rights. This is where non-interference laws and the legal system come into play.
So when we look at our “positive rights,” are they even rights or are they simply ways for the government to control us in the name of the “greater good”?
We believe that it’s important to realize how incompatible this thought process is. You cannot have both the right to freedom and limitations as to how free you can be. There are no in-betweens, but yet the government wants you to believe that you’re free while still requiring you to:
• Attend specific schools • Pay money for goods and services that don’t benefit you (taxes) • Take immunizations against your will • Follow regulations that infringe on your liberty
We could go on and on about all the positive rights that actually take freedom away from you, but these may not be positive rights at all. Our current society is built on negative rights because any positive right you have, has a limitation, a requirement, and a way that the government can come in and take it from you.
Examples of Positive Rights
Where issues arise is when we start to talk about how positive rights contradict negative rights, and the two are incompatible because one always steps on the toes of the other.
For example, social welfare is a positive right. We, as American citizens of the United States, have the positive right to receive state and federal welfare benefits if we’re unable to care for ourselves and our family.
What is often forgotten is the fact that people all over the country are required to pay taxes to pay for these programs even though they’re not benefiting from them. So, in turn, the positive right of social welfare impacts the negative right of not requiring us to hand our money over to the government.
If we break it down to the most basic level, where do our positive rights end, and our negative rights begin? Under what conditions does a positive action about something we “should” do become a negative action about something we “shouldn’t” do?
Political Philosopher Isaiah Berlin discussed this in a popular lecture titled “Two Concepts of Liberty.” He said:
If negative liberty is concerned with the freedom to pursue one’s interests according to one’s own free will and without “interference from external bodies,” then positive liberty takes up the “degree to which individuals or groups” are able to “act autonomously” in the first place.
For the sake of clarity: Please provide examples of negative rights.
Since ALL rights have to be enforced / protected - and enforcement / protection must come from some higher authority or power (otherwise, in the case of self-enforcement, it's just "might makes right") - I would say that all rights are "positive" rights, and that there are no such things as "negative" rights.
Consequently, the expression "positive rights" is meaningless, and should be replaced with "rights."
Regards,
Sounds like a fake concept and/or a borrowed premise. Why entertain it at all? Just call out the fallacy.
Nothing that requires my wealth or effort can by claimed as a “right” by another, else I am no more than a slave to the other’s need, real or imagined.
You can claim as a right that I can’t do anything to you (without just provocation), but you can never claim that I have to do anything for you.
“If we have to be forced into freedom, are we really free at all?”
If you tell your 20 something child they have to move out of your house have you “forced” them into freedom? Is said child really free if not free to stay against your will?
No, govt is a construct to guarantee liberty, all of our rights are inherent in ourselves. People create govt, so no govt can endow rights. Only people have rights and by extension, a govt of for and by the people have a right to exist at their pleasure.
In fact, the idea that govt must provide for indigents etc is false and a construct of statism.
People, acting through their govt, however can provide for such things, but the will of the people can and must be the throttle and brake to all such benefits.
God gives rights to man; man gives authority to govt; govt executes justice as a third party to prevent a state of war between men. nothing more. Govt grants me nothing. I grant govt everything it has power to do, and nothing more.