RE: Rights- reciprocal or absolute?

You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

Rights- reciprocal or absolute?

in liberty •  7 years ago 

You're constructing rights as positive, not negative. This is another issue with imprecise language and not examining deep enough into the why question. There are no positive rights. Rights are legal descriptions of where property ownership applies. The ownership is a priori true, but one does not have a right to positive action. One only has a right to negative action (i.e. not having one's property violated). To argue that there are positive rights implies that there are positive duties, which is not a tenable position.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

"You're constructing rights as positive, not negative."
As did you when you said "You have a right to ownership in your body...". This is a negative right worded in a positive way. Put in the negative form, it would be worded "No one has a right to ownership in anyone's body but their own". Wording it positively may be less precise, but it is how most people understand it better.
All rights are negative rights, as in "No one has the right to...". If you believe I have stated something incorrectly by phrasing it as a positive, then I apologize.