RIGHTS By P.J. O’Rourke
There’s a reason why so much political thinking starts out in the neighborhood of dealism, crosses Naive Street, and winds up in Stupidville. The reason is confusion between negative rights and positive rights. We all agree that rights are wonderful, and we’ve got a lot of them – at least in this country – and we should get a lot more. But there are two kinds of rights – Getoutta Here Rights and Gimmie Rights . Or, as they’re called in political theory, “negative rights” and “positive rights.” Negative rights are our rights to be left alone – to do, be, think, and say (and buy and sell) whatever we want as long as our behavior doesn’t cause real harms. Positive rights are our rights to real goods – our rights to get things. The right to education. The right to health care. The right to a living wage, etc. Negative rights are front and center in the Constitution and the Declaration
Amendment positive rights to a jury if you’re put on trial for violating the negative rights of other people.) Positive rights are front and center in political-activism protests and politicians’ election campaigns – “A chicken in every pot.” (That was a Republican slogan in the 1928 presidential race... It came back to peck them in 1932.) Independence because our founding fathers – savvy political thinkers – would have asked, “Where did the chicken come from? Who did it belong to before? How did the chicken get into every pot, apparently for free, without the right to be a chicken farmer being lost by someone?” Your right to do, be, think, and say in no way impinges on anyone else’s right to do, be, think, or say. And, if you have even a rudimentary understanding of free market economics, you know that your right to buy and sell doesn’t impinge on the buying and selling rights of others. But your right to physical items, such as a free education, impinges on everybody. In order for you to be given a thing, that thing (or some tax-and-spend portion of it) has to be taken from somebody else. The person from whom the thing is taken loses negative rights so that you can gain positive ones. This chicken isn’t mentioned in the Constitution or the Declaration of
of Independence: “certain unalienable rights... Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” All 10 rights in the of Bill of Rights are negative rights (except, maybe, the Sixth and Seventh
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May 2019
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