The Fallacy of Positive Rights
The entitlement mindset is poisoning a generation and ruining our economy.
I know it’s not fashionable to worry in the hopeful times we now find ourselves in. And I know it’s not proper to worry when you’re only 22. And I know that when 22-year-olds living in the time of change worry, they are supposed to worry about midterms or finals — and believe me I do. But there is something larger that worries me: positive rights.
Positive rights are the greatest fallacy affecting this country today and for well into the future. Their entrenchment in my generation’s culture has handicapped us more than any recession has or ever could. The idea of positive rights effectively turns selfish envy for the possessions of others into mere desire for your rights to be upheld. But, on more practical terms, it is the programs they directly lead to that are perhaps the clearest example of the dangers of this attitude.
The Heritage Foundation has estimated that Medicare and Social Security alone will cost us $42.9 trillion more than we have budgeted for them over the next 75 years. And that’s just the unfunded commitments of two programs which have developed directly out of a positive rights mentality. There are dozens, if not hundreds, more programs and trillions upon trillions of dollars tied up in them.
So, now you see the problems with positive rights, but what exactly are they anyway? What is the concept behind them? Well, when I say “positive rights” I mean the idea that I have an undeniable right to take from you that which I have not earned. It is the idea that I, just by virtue of being born, am entitled to something that you have rightfully earned. I don’t need to work for these things. I don’t need to rely on your compassion or sympathy for these things. I simply deserve them because it is my right.
I’m here to say what is rarely said. Neither you nor I have an undeniable or unalienable right to take something from somebody else. We have no right to take what is not ours. This principle extends to all things, even water and food. We are born with no inherent right to someone else’s water or food no matter how little we have or how much they have.
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Stephen Gutowski is the founder and editor of The College Politico.
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35 Comments
1. david reid:Great article its what leads to the euro-nanny state mentality that will bring down europe i hope you make it happen good luck.
Feb 26, 2009 - 3:18 am 2. Jarhead91:I was in agreement until the end when Mr. Gutowski whimped out and ignored his own obvious conclusions. Social welfare programs are destructive pyramid schemes and should be phased out.
If the states want to administer welfare programs, fine. The federal government should be small, remote, and uninvolved in our lives.
Feb 26, 2009 - 4:30 am 3. Tomp:Nothing is a ‘right’ if someone else has to pay for it.
Feb 26, 2009 - 5:42 am 4. seven:Oba-mao will help you be more sensitive to the rights of others. That will include property rights. Water, land and mineral rights will go away.
Feb 26, 2009 - 7:06 am 5. Mike T:Your right to reject some one with their hand in your pocket is over.
We also see reparation in the issue. You will be caused to pay for rights you did not relinquish to a great enough extent in the past.
He didn’t just wimp out at the end, but rather affirmed positive rights in an indirect way. What a philosophical mess.
Feb 26, 2009 - 7:27 am 6. Jarhead91:He argues that we should continue welfare programs out of “responsibility.” I disagree. It is not the government’s responsibility at all.
If people were allowed to keep more of their income instead of having it re-distributed by politicians and bureaucrats, it would be our collective responsibility as private citizens to support charities that aid people down on their luck.
Feb 26, 2009 - 7:51 am 7. Barrett:First, give the guy a break. He is, at 22, well ahead of the masses. He is also philosophically correct.
Second, there are societal benefits to certain social safety net programs such as unemployment. The costs to society would likely be higher if certain negative externalities occured (e.g. higher crime rates).
The problem with these programs is that they become permanent for people. Under Clinton and the Republican Congress led by Gingrich, welfare reform was passed that was a step in the right direction away from permanent dependency. Obama has undone all of this in the Porking of America (aka the Stimulus) Bill.
Third, his mistake is in the application of societal safety net programs.
Any such programs should be: (i) administered at the state level without any reliance on redistribution from the federal government; (ii) temporary in nature with a clear end; and (iii) structured in a way so that the transition back to productivity is incented.
The federal government should no role in these programs. The federal government should focus on national security, the rule of law, the regulation of the states (with the context and proper balance of states rights) and the maintenance of a strong monetary system to promote growth and low inflation.
Feb 26, 2009 - 8:46 am 8. Mike T:I’m 25, and I read the ending of this article thinking “why did this guy decide to torture and mutilate his thesis.”
Feb 26, 2009 - 9:05 am 9. TL:Stephen you come so close to getting it right but then you cave in to liberalism. When you give away your money it is charity. When you give away my money it is tyranny. It doesn’t matter whether you give my stuff to others because you think it is the “responsible” thing to do with my money or because you believe others have a “right” to my stuff. Either way you’re a tyrant who tramples on my right to liberty.
Feb 26, 2009 - 9:06 am 10. Mike T:You forgot to add “and a pony” to your wish list. There is no such thing as a “temporary federal program” unless you are writing about a short-lived government contract.
Feb 26, 2009 - 9:07 am 11. Marc Malone:#7 Barrett – Poverty does not necessarily lead to crime. It depends on the quality of society. Hunger is never a reason for crime, but it does get used as an excuse. Decent people don’t resort to crime.
As for responsible government, the Declaration does say “promote the general welfare”. The thing to understand is that it doesn’t say “ensure the general welfare”. The problem starts when people cease to have any shame or humility when accepting charity. That’s the real danger of the nanny-state. People lose their sense of shame.
The government should help people out in times of crisis, but the help should be minimal. I have no problem with soup-lines. People have to get off their duffs and go to them. They stand publicly in line, then take what they’re given. They shouldn’t get food stamps, which they can later sell off to buy booze.
Poor, hungry children should be fed. It’s not their fault they are poor and hungry. However, it shouldn’t be done in such a manner as to subsidize the parents’ lifestyle. Put the kids into a shelter, until the parents can get their act together. That’ll motivate the parents.
Hunger, shame, deprivation, and other such pain are great motivators. The worst thing the govenment can do is take these things away from people.
Feb 26, 2009 - 11:00 am 12. Mike:And one wonders why liberals can run ruff-shod over the right. Our writer makes a strong case against positive rights then hides from the implications of his own thoughts. Who determines the level of ‘responsibility’ and what are the implications if they are not met? Chastisement? Sadly as long there is a claim on someone’s property, there is a gun to confiscate said property in the name of someone’s need. No one’s need has any claim on anyone’s property. None.
Feb 26, 2009 - 11:32 am 13. ReConUSMC:Greed , Success explained vs Why not Redistribution of Wealth making all Equal
*Classic Video Must See*: Famed American greatest Economist Milton Friedman VS Marlo Thomas “Goof Ball”Leftist Husband .
You see on Live TV back then , the far left of left Questioner Act like He is a complete fool , Null and Void of any sense of History , common sense , reason or Basic Reality .
I might ad he made Millions with his own Talk show I guess is ok and not greedy much like Opera a Billionaire
He acts much like a Child …. saying Mommy I don’t see why stupid ain’t Cool ???
Please pass this around … Frankly I will keep it in my files .
Thanks to the Heritage Foundation .
Video : At the Heritage Foundation web sight .
Feb 26, 2009 - 11:45 am 14. Stephen Gutowski:Milton Friedman is Awesome
It looks like there are a lot of reasonable if not misguided objections to my article. I have to say that I am certainly open to the idea that charity and private organizations could handle feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and so forth. In fact, private industry is nearly always, if not always, better at accomplishing these things than government.
But that wasn’t the point of this article. The point of this article wasn’t the social welfare programs themselves but rather the attitudes that currently empower them. Once we remove the “positive rights” attitude we can open up our society and by extension government to find the best (usually private) solutions to the problems of hunger and real poverty.
However, I will say that any government that lets its citizens starve and go without the opportunity for shelter is illegitimate. So if for some reason charity and private organizations can’t do those things (and I’m not saying they can’t) than the government must.
Feb 26, 2009 - 11:45 am 15. ReConUSMC:Stephen G. What you said was 101 % correct . It is not in the DNA of a Socialist to ”understand ” you .
Feb 26, 2009 - 12:21 pm 16. LawhawkSF:Remember Conservatives , Christians and Capitalist in America give far more Free everything to the World than does all of Socialist Europe, Russia and China .
This young man has a great deal of insight. I think he can be forgiven for concluding with a concept that his generation has been told is holy writ. At his age, I was a confirmed socialist and a proud member of the “new left.” I am willing to grant him the honor of saying he has gotten a whole lot more of economics right than I did. Assuming that the taxpayers would continue to breed at the same rate as they always had, it bothered me not one bit that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme. He sees it correctly. And for those ready to retire, Social Security is a contract upon which they have, however foolishly, relied. If Social Security and all its wrong assumptions are finally destroyed and replaced with private savings accounts, then future generations will have options that current retirees often didn’t have. So the time to kill Social Security as we know it is now. It is an entitlement only for those who were already bamboozled then forced into it. Ditto for unemployment payouts. Nobody has the right to be unemployed any more than the right to be employed. Only a healthy economy can solve the problem of unemployment. Creating new massive “rights” will only make things worse. So long as the government continues to prop up phony rights, private charity and the churches will never be able to do their job.
Feb 26, 2009 - 1:15 pm 17. TL:Stephen, we all are entitled to our own opinion about what form of government is “legitimate.” There is no moral absolute. Each of us decides whether the social compact being offered is fair and whether and how to resist if we think it isn’t. For my part, I’ll resist, in whatever way I can, any government that doesn’t recognize property rights and the right not to be put into involuntary servitude. There is also no such thing as a “right” in any absolute sense. We have only the freedoms that we are allowed or have the power to defend. You along with the majority of voters have the power to make me work most of the year for other people’s benefit, and are exercising that power. That is all. It isn’t “legitimate” or “right.” It just is. Maybe one day it will change. We have another 4 or 5 billion years left on this planet so we’ll see.
Feb 26, 2009 - 4:20 pm 18. Jarhead91:Stephen – Substitute “People” for “Government” and I will agree with your last statement.
Feb 26, 2009 - 5:13 pm 19. fred:“There is no moral absolute.”
That is a serious philosophical error right there, and evidence of the influence of post-modernist Marxism.
Rights most certainly do derive from moral absolutes. If there are no morals and no Creator to to set them up, then there can be no rights as in our natural human rights to the things that are referred to in our Constitution. My right to life and liberty most certainly commands moral respect and adherence. If there are no absolutes, then you can employ clever sophistry to obviate them.
I’m generally with “Barrett” in #7 in his explanation of how to handle the adversities faced by our fellow citizens and society at large. No one has a “positive” right to material things, but those of us who are WISE understand that a proper balance has to be struck, based upon MORAL CONSIDERATIONS (which derive from our Judaeo-Christian traditions), as part of being responsible citizens.
The whole concept of positive rights derives from the way in which lawyers and politicians (they are often the same) fight for their constituencies. They have to harden their claims using the very technical language of law and tradition in order to make an argument. They don’t deal in the nuances of ethics and morality, which govern how we think about the social safety net.
In an ideal world all citizens would be charitable, wise, and also solicitous for their own material well being as well. But the world is not that way. This is why the best thing we can hope for is some mix of private charity and compassion and government also stepping into the breach. We have to ever be vigilant about the balance that is struck here. Today, just as was the case in the 1960’s and 1970’s, we are moving towards the collectivist end of the spectrum. This will fail society and make us all poorer into the bargain, because it will redistribute too much and kill incentives and job creation.
Look at history, people. Socialist experiments and societies have all failed. There are very understandable reasons for this, but our kids under age 30 were not allowed by their teachers and then professors to have any discussion about the failures and atrocities of socialist societies. The 20th century is a graveyard of failure, brutality, and deceit on the part of the Marxists.
Feb 26, 2009 - 6:20 pm 20. Jeff Perren:“However, I will say that any government that lets its citizens starve and go without the opportunity for shelter is illegitimate.”
Madison and Jefferson disagreed with you over 200 years ago.
The Founding Fathers On Redistribution
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” — James Madison, 4 Annals of Congress 179, 1794
“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” — Thomas Jefferson
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison in a letter to James Robertson
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object
saying:
“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” — James Madison
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
Stephen:
Do you believe that the original form of the Federal Government was “illegitimate”?
Feb 26, 2009 - 8:58 pm 21. Jonesy55:Our positive rights to military protection/border control and the rule of law also have to be paid for by confiscating the wealth of others via taxation. Any conservatives willing to argue against that here or is it not the principle of forced contributions to a federal budget that concerns you but the destination of those funds?
Maybe contribution to the military budget should be voluntary charity? Maybe the enforcement of contract law could be paid for by fees paid by those entering into contracts instead of by taxes?
Feb 27, 2009 - 4:38 am 22. Mike T:Jonesy55,
Of course. With defense, border control and law enforcement, everyone benefits. With welfare, only the recipients benefit, but we are told that we all benefit in some intangible, feel-good way. Liberals like to tell us how charitable they are, but the statistics bear themselves out. Unless you call paying taxes charitable, liberals are some of the most miserly people with their money out there.
Feb 27, 2009 - 5:36 am 23. Jonesy55:Mike T
It’s still confiscating my money by force, maybe I wouldn’t benefit from a draconian border control policy, maybe I own a business that would benefit from a free market in labour without borders.
Maybe my assessment of the threats faced and therefore the appropriate level of defence spending is different to the government’s. Why should they be able to force me to pay for their assessment which could well be wrong?
Feb 27, 2009 - 6:47 am 24. Jarhead91:Providing for the common defense is a federal responsibility explicitly defined in the Constitution. The ability to control borders is one of the basic requirements to qualify as a nation rather than a region.
Feb 27, 2009 - 7:36 am 25. Mike T:There is a difference between being wrong in degree and being wrong in kind. The difference is like that between night and day.
Feb 27, 2009 - 8:49 am 26. Kirly:the battle against turning to socialism in this country was lost nearly 70 years ago. FDR took care of that. O is just trying to finish the job.
this article misses the mark but it also shows great promise that someone at only 22 is moving in the right direction.
If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 40, you have no brain. paraphrase of churchill IIRC. Barrett is right, he’s well ahead of the masses whose thinking is so incredibly immature.
oh crap! O is about to speak in camp lejuene. look for another market plummet!
Feb 27, 2009 - 8:55 am 27. Mike T:And true to form, most 20 year old liberals are extremely generous with others’ money and time, but miserly with theirs.
Feb 27, 2009 - 12:01 pm 28. momof3:I am so sick of hearing people talk about their “rights” to things. Healthcare being most common “right” currently. Where on earth-in what document-do they see their right to do as they wish and still have shelter/food/healthcare/etc given them? I don’t know about the whole USA, but here in Texas we have the right to shoot to kill to protect not only our life but our property as well. It’s high time we started availing ourselves of that.
Dh and I are both conservative, but I took the early liberal route to get here. And we have yet to fill out a tax return and find we had less than 10% of our gross in charitable giving. How much (of his own money) does Obama give? That seems like a relevant stat to me, for our new transparent government to distribute.
Feb 27, 2009 - 6:46 pm 29. myth buster:I have nothing against Unemployment Insurance, but I object to it being compulsory. It should be voluntary, and should be administered by private insurance companies, although the government could offer its own voluntary version if no private company is willing to offer the product.
Feb 27, 2009 - 8:38 pm 30. David S:I’m all for the proper approach to government assistance – and given what we have seen so far from Obama, he appears to share this belief.
Peace.
DS
Feb 28, 2009 - 7:37 am 31. Richard Cook:#20
Jeff, I am affraid that we are so far from your examples that the system will have to collapse before we return to them. Before I got deployed I spoke to people everyday on my train to Chicago and the vast majority didn’t even care about what you are pointing out as examples. Their primary motivation, to boil it down, was “Where’s mine?”.
Mar 1, 2009 - 2:18 am 32. Jeff Perren:Richard,
I fear you may well be right, but there is never any certainty in human events. All we can do is keep putting the right ideas out there.
I gather you are in the military so you know that one never gives up and that, even if we are to lose the country to dictatorship, it’s best to go down fighting for what’s right.
My best wishes for your safe return.
Mar 1, 2009 - 7:37 am 33. Dave D:problem as these replies i think show, is that if I don’t have a right, why do you have a responsibility? Thing is, you don’t, you have a choice to, but there is no responsibility.
You really can’t have responsibility without positive rights. I don’t have a right to a nintendo ds. That also means that no one has a responsibility to give me one. Someone may if they choose to, but no one would say they were shirking a responsibility if they didn’t.
If a person is altruistic, it’s like you said, they don’t have to be. But without a right, you will find no one has any responsibility, and its really just the personal motives of the donor that drives the decision.
Mar 1, 2009 - 7:51 pm 34. HT:Richard,
I’m guessing that David S. lives in Chi-town and rides your el. He clearly wants his.
Mar 10, 2009 - 1:08 pm 35. HT:David S.
I too am “for the proper approach to government assistance.” Just stop. It does not work. The end result has always been bloated, inefficient, slow, etc. And, getting rid of it if (when) it does not work is basically impossible. Please provide one example where the government has not in the end eff’ed it up. The more honest statement would be for you to simply say that you just want a large government bureaucracy with the maximum number of people on the public payroll (dole).
Mar 10, 2009 - 1:17 pm