The left likes to describe everything imaginable as a “human right” because it imparts a moral urgency to their latest schemes for buying votes.
We’ve tried explaining that real rights are “negative” while handouts are “positive” but that’s as unpersuasive as only autistic libertarians can manage: they call the thing they’re trying to promote “negative.”
I was thinking about this, and I’ve come up with better terms: “creative” rights vs. “multiple choice” rights. The way I’d explain the difference is something like this:
Imagine your freedom of speech. What can you say, how can you express yourself? Well, it’s entirely up to your creativity. No one can even guess at what you can say, or even how you can express yourself.
Now consider your right to vote. They will literally hand you a multiple-choice quiz, that’s what a ballot is. How did those names get on there? You have to be a political insider to really know. And, sure, there’s a section for a write-in candidate, but no one is getting elected through a write-in campaign.
Next, what about the right to religious liberty? You really can believe anything you like. There are countless denominations because when people have a dispute, they’ll create a new religion. You can assign whatever meaning or lack thereof to the grander design of the universe, again, limited only by your creativity.
What about a right to healthcare? If you go to the UK or Canada, you can choose from precisely one national health service. And they’ll tell you what treatments you’re allowed to get, and they’ll tell you how long you have to wait for them. And, again, if you want to know why those are the choices, you have to be an insider.
That’s the difference between rights limited only by your creativity as a human being, and so-called “rights” that limit your freedom to whatever’s on the multiple-choice form.
12 replies on “New terms for rights vs. entitlements”
For all who are interested, here is a an advertisement from Hillsdale College on this very subject:
After reading some comments: I should clarify that this isn’t meant to be a complete description of the philosophy of rights.
Rather, I picked the contrast of creative rights vs. multiple-choice rights to help people immediatly visualize the difference. Another term for creative rights might be blank canvas rights, which is more of a concrete thing people can visualize.
The aim is to link real rights with freedom and link government entitlements with control and limited choice.
This is to fight back against mantras like “healthcare is a human right” because it sounds great on the surface, but single-payer healthcare, like all entitlements, is really a means of control. We need to get through to people that these handouts are really limiting their freedom.
Agreed. However, listing government perks as “positive rights” is self-defeating to your argument in that it leaves the audience thinking that anything mandated by the government to benefit the group or individual is somehow a good thing. In fact, the opposite is the truth. Unless I am mistaken, the point of your commentary is to win the minds of people to the cause of Liberty at the expense of government power and control; therefore, I believe that defining unalienable Rights as positives for the individual and government mandates as negatives for the individual.
That’s just my $0.02 worth of blather.
Yes, that’s why I think that terminology is bad.
The thing that heard a while back about about rights: Rights are things you can do without demanding anything from anyone else except non-interference. Religion: stay out of my business, but I don’t demand you build me a church building. Press.. I don’t demand you buy me a printing press or pay for my internet. Speech.. You don’t buy me a microphone or rent me a hall. Arms….. I don’t demand you buy me a gun or ammo. You get the idea? Free health care…. Someone other than you pays for it, either by money or, in effect, slavery. Free college… Same thing. There is your test.
That’s a fair test, but you need to explain why that’s better than a government handout to a person who doesn’t know any better. To a naive person, “the government will give me stuff” sounds better than “I have to do stuff myself.”
That’s why I think it’s critical to link rights to freedom vs. control. So you want to explain that entitlements always come with strings attached.
Freedom is a positive.
Control is a negative.
How would you use that idea to describe the right to bear arms?
I would “creatively” put holes in things to defend my unalienable rights.
Joking aside, I suppose that I don’t follow the initial author’s statement:
How does anyone describe an unalienable right as a negative? That “logic” eludes my analytical mind. That said, there is absolutely nothing “positive” about a so-called “right” that can be taken by another.
I think the idea is a “negative right” is one where government power is taken away, a “positive right” is one where government power is increased. For example, in the Bill of Rights, you get negative constructions like “Congress shall make no law.”
Edit: also, Harry’s description, “rights are things you can do without demanding anything from anyone else except non-interference,” could explain why they’re called negative, since you make no demands of others. An entitlement, OTOH, would be positive as you must demand service from others.
Well, in that context, your definitions make sense. However, in the context of individual, unalienable rights, that definition is completely backwards — ergo my confusion. I define unalienable rights from the perspective of an individual who has had them granted by his Creator, not his government:
Anything else are effectively NOT rights, rather they are government-instituted perks and benefits. When I say “anything else,” I mean anything that cannot be derived from those first three. For example, government-mandated medical insurance (euphemistically called healthcare nowadays) does not meet the definition as derived from Life, Liberty or the pursuit of Happiness — rather it’s a so-called perk defined to support an individual’s Life at the expense of some of his Liberty, and by depriving one of his property, it reduces his ability to pursue Happiness. In other words, if the government mandates something, then it is likely not a right.
Needless to say, I was somewhat confused by your “positive” and “negative” terminology. Thanks for the clarification.
I’d point out that your right to self defense (to broaden the idea beyond bearing arms) includes any means of defending yourself that you can imagine. There are dozens of schools of martial arts, thousands of kinds of firearms, you can invent your own, or you can even go Jackie Chan and pick up anything handy to hit someone with. Your right to self defense is dictated by your circumstances and your creativity in finding means to protect yourself.
Then contrast that with the “right to call the police,” which is a multiple choice right where you are provided a few emergency services providers and 911. You then have to wait on them to arrive, you have to hope they decide to answer your call, etc.