Video: Solider at McCaskill townhall meeting

"I don't want an explanation. I want an apology." Whew. This guy nails it - limited government. No healthcare mess. Dang, it's powerful.

"Negative rights" means rights that don't place a positive obligation on another person. For instance my right "to pursue happiness" requires nothing from you in order for it to be realized for me. On the other hand, if I had had a right "to happiness", then you (and the rest of society) would be obligated to do something to ensure my happiness. It then would be a positive right.

Jefferson was very careful with his wording in the Declaration to ensure that his phrase spoke only of negative rights. And the Founders were careful that the rights recognized in the Bill of Rights were negative rights. It was Roosevelt who turned this upside down with his Second Bill of Rights which said that everyone was entitled to a decent paying job, decent housing, decent healthcare, etc. These are positive rights because they place an obligation on everyone else.

The Constitution doesn't give the government positive rights. It gives the government certain powers. The Constitution does recognize negative rights -- and only negative rights -- for people in the Bill of Rights. Positive rights are a later innovation of the Statists to give the government more responsibility for people and therefore more power over people.

That definition of a “positive right” is nothing more than a badly disguised redefinition of obligation; further, it assumes that rights are a zero-sum system that your excess is by right for someone who lacks it - That is in direct conflict with Classical Jurisprudence: if someone steals something then the thief is to be punished. That is to say, that a rich man stealing from a poor man should pay the price for that theft just as a poor man stealing from a rich man should be punished.

If someone has a “right to a job” then I am obligated to provide for that right regardless if I have money, or income, at all... even if I am destitute and starving to death I am obligated to provide work for these others despite my own supposed Right to Life (or property).

Whereas if someone has a Right to Life I am only obligated to make sure that I don’t kill him... and even then if I am attacked killing him is legitimate self-defense. (For all practical purposes it would be him gambling his life against mine, of his own free-will, and losing in the given scenario.)

The only one who has the Authority to give a positive right is God, and what He decrees happens.

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