[quote]NickViar wrote:
It seems that much political debate centers around what type of rights should be protected. There are two types of rights: negative and positive.
Most supporters of “big government”(they often don’t believe they are, and who am I to say otherwise?) believe that people have positive rights. Most supporters of “small government”(if positive rights exist, then supporters of small government-libertarians, “tea party” types, Constitutionalists, etc.-may actually be supporters of tyranny) like the concept of negative rights.
Positive rights require the action of others. Negative rights require that others not act against you.
A negative right to life requires that others not kill you. A positive right to life requires that one needing a lung transplant to live be given a lung transplant, regardless of his ability to pay for it, the willingness of another to provide him with it, etc.
Should a restaurant be forced to serve, say, people with dark skin? Does the owner of a business have a right to decide how to run his business, or does a member of a protected class have a right to the service of others?
Negative rights do not violate the negative rights of others; however, positive rights can conflict.
What type of rights do we have? What are they?[/quote]
We have negative rights and positive obligations. Positive obligations do not imply coercion, only that there are actions that may have negative consequences at some point in time if we do not choose to take them.
They go hand in hand. One must respect the idea of positive obligations, since a disrespect of it is essentially what fuels the erroneous idea that there are positive rights. Positive rights simply amount to slavery, or the idea that your actions are only yours when I don’t need them first.
The whole thing boils down to this: the doctrine of negative rights does not in any way, shape, or form imply that inaction alone will suffice to protect these rights. Action is required in order to protect our right to inaction against us on the part of others.
These actions must necessarily include self-defense and whatnot. But they also must include actions that do not feed the argument that we should be forced to do otherwise benevolent deeds. Feed the hungry of your own volition so that there is no reason for people to begin arguing that we should be forced to do so. You cannot force someone to fix a problem that they are already fixing voluntarily.
edit: after all, coercion always begins under the guise of offering protection.