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I know I don’t usually discuss rights except for the discussions of the right to bear arms that got finally the recognition it deserves as a right of the individual but I’ve read the discussion on Captain Of a Crew of One about rights.
We absolutely should be decrying as ridiculous the claims that health care, “living wages”, higher education etc are “rights”, but when our only argument is “show me in the Constitution”, we are doing both ourselves, and our society, a disservice.
I’m bringing just the bottom line and I do recommend to read the entire discussion as it is really wise.
In a time that Obama tries to encourage his voters that they have a right to almost everything it is important to be able to really explain why the all “it is our right to get everything we want” approach is wrong.
I’m not sure that the argument saying that someone doesn’t have a right for employment is not reasonable because it means that someone else has the duty to employ him regardless of his qualifications is the right argument.
I do know that it is possible to interpret these wannabe rights in the European sense - people have the right to live a decent life including financing their higher education, health care and other things that are taken for granted in the Social-Democracies of West Europe.
The decision to be a liberal democracy or a social one is a decision that we as a nation have to continue making on a daily basis because we would rather have minimal government, because we prefer negative freedom to the positive one. The definition of a negative freedom is the freedom from interference in the way we want to live. The definition of a positive freedom is the freedom to do something for example keep a decent standard of living so it means that the state is obligated to provide us with the means to have that decent standard of living.
I suppose that when people agree on most things it is easier to go with the positive definition because there is a similar idea as to what the good decent lives means to them but when there are so many thought patterns it is better to work with the negative definition and thus making sure that no person or administrator would have the right to tell us how to live our lives just because they think they know what’s best for us.
