IF YOU have the inclination (and more importantly, the patience) to pay attention to politics during your tenure at the University, you'll notice that both sides of most debates tend to frame their arguments in terms of rights. The same word emerges when a civil libertarian claims that all people have a right to free speech, and again when someone like Ralph Nader argues that all people have a right to free healthcare. At first glance, these rights claims seem similar -- they each embody the simple moral claim that all people are entitled to something, such as free speech or free healthcare. But this superficial similarity belies an important distinction between two very different concepts of what a right is. This subtle conceptual schism demarcates a significant political boundary that divides our campus and our country. Once this boundary is drawn and investigated, it becomes clear why the exemplary civil libertarian has a defensible conception of rights, while our hypothetical Naderite does not.
Types of rights can be distinguished by the kind of moral obligations they entail. So-called negative rights create obligations for people not to act. Your negative right to free speech, for example, creates an obligation for other people not to prevent you from voicing your opinion. In the same way, your negative rights to life, liberty and property mean that your neighbors have an obligation not to murder you, imprison you or steal from you.
Positive rights, by contrast, create demanding pro-active duties. That is, rather than conferring a mere obligation on your neighbors not to do something to you, positive rights create a moral duty for these neighbors to perform some action for you. This makes them radically different and much more intrusive than negative rights. For example, when someone passionately proclaims that everyone has a right to free healthcare, he means that everyone has the right to have free healthcare provided to him or her. It follows that some other people have a duty to provide the service of healthcare, without any compensation or remuneration. Free healthcare, after all, does not just fall from the sky. It must be provided, willingly or not, by the toil of other human beings.
Additionally, most who believe in the positive right to healthcare also advocate the government enforcement of this right. They think that people not only have a duty to provide healthcare for their needy neighbors, but that the government must enforce this duty. On this view, my state-enforced right to healthcare grants me the power to command, just by virtue of my existence, that other people serve me. The more pitifully needy I become, the more perversely this power grows to demand service from my neighbors' sweat, either directly or else indirectly through the state's confiscatory taxation of the fruits of their labor. If they don't serve voluntarily, then they will be pressed into service. If my right to healthcare is to be satisfied, then they must be forced to sacrifice themselves for my sake. This is the stark reality that lies behind the cheery veneer of positive rights that activists routinely claim as essential components of social justice.
Negative rights do not carry such heavy consequences. They merely impose a modest condition of mutual non-interference among citizens, so that you can live your life and I can live mine. Although it is true that the enforcement of negative rights does call on everyone jointly to provide for a system of criminal law, this provision is relatively small and importantly beneficial to every member of society. Unlike the establishment of a vast government bureaucracy to hand out welfare and healthcare checks, the maintenance of a system of law and order does not unjustly coerce some people to sacrifice a great deal purely for the benefit of others.
So if during your stay at the University you find yourself tempted by some fervid activist's latest "basic right" of the week, remember what is at stake. No government can guarantee a commodity to one person without forcing someone else to provide it. Among our nation's core political principles is the truth that in a free and humane society, individuals must not be victimized or used as a means for the sake of the collective welfare. Forced labor and involuntary sacrifice, no matter how they are disguised, can never fit into this view of justice.
Anthony Dick is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
PATEL: Personal development courses support students beyond the gradebook
By Heer Patel | 3 days agoThe University must rethink its approach to education beyond traditional major-specific requirements and mandate personal development courses.
EDITORIAL: Commercialization threatens U.Va.’s educational mission
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoAfter all, measuring the University’s worth in terms of accrued capital, operational efficiency and numerical rankings molds this space into just another cookie-cutter institution.
YOUNIS: Why every U.Va. student should say yes to English
By Ayat Younis | January 9, 2025Every student at the University, regardless of their primary field of study, can professionally and academically benefit from engaging with the English department.
