Negative Rights

What is a right? 

There are two theories that seek to describe what a right is: positive rights and negative rights. A positive right requires action on the part of someone else. For instance, someone must pay for your health-care or education, or provide that service for free. Negative rights require inaction, to be left alone. Your right to life is your right to not be murdered. Your right to property is your right to not be robbed. Your right to free speech is your ability to speak your mind without being stopped.

These two theories are mutually exclusive. Your rights cannot be both positive and negative. To give an example, if you have a positive right to health-care, you are infringing on the property rights of some poor sucker who will need to pay for your health-care. Another alternative is to force the doctor to provide you with health-care, which is a violation of his liberty. There is no way to do this without infringing on someone's negative rights.

The theory of negative rights is a foundational tenet of conservatism. Conservatives believe that it costs nothing to be a decent person. Simply live and let live.

What Are Your Rights

There are many negative rights outlined in the Declaration and Constitution. First, however, we must point out that these documents do NOT grant you these rights. Neither does the government. These rights are inalienable, they rightfully belong to everyone. These document's indicate that these rights are given to us by a Creator. Our government is simply set up by us to protect these negative rights.

The first and most important right is your right to life: the right to not be murdered. Without the right to life, all other rights are meaningless. Next is your right to liberty: your right to not be enslaved, or forced to do something against your will. Then you have you right to pursue happiness. The statement found only in the Declaration of Independence speaks of eudaimonia, the pursuit of human flourishing.

(Jefferson considered property rights to be under this umbrella as well. The Fifth Amendment protects your right to private property, as well as your right to life and liberty.)

All of the rights found in the Constitution are examples of negative rights, which the government exists to protect. With negative rights, your freedom is only limited by the rights of others. You have the freedom to do virtually anything, as long as you don't violate the rights of others. That's called liberty

Promoting Liberty

So how do we promote liberty? By protecting the negative rights of all citizens. By force if we must. The institution of government is established as a referee to protect negative rights of it's citizens, and severely punish those who violate the rights of others. Sometimes by having their rights proportionally violated. It may seem contradictory to use force to promote liberty. However, it is imperative that negative rights be protected, in order to uphold civilization.

If we want to  maintain a society where every citizen has maximum freedom, then each of us has certain responsibilities that we must fulfill.