28 October 2008 - Obama: A Positive Rights Disaster
Barack Obama apparently wants to create a "Second Bill of Rights" for the U.S. Constitution.
This would provide "positive rights" such as those enshrined in the South African Constitution--rights to health care, housing, work, a clean environment, et cetera.
It sounds lovely, and is a much-beloved dream of the legal academic left. Unfortunately, it is an absolute disaster.
History and present-day experience teach us that the best way to ensure that those rights are violated is to enshrine them in constitutional form.
Doing so allows politicians to claim they have achieved something simply by providing rights, without having to actually provide the substance of those rights. The rights themselves are unenforceable, and provide for a massive expansion of government power that undermines existing "negative" rights.
It is worth noting that the Soviet Constitution also had plenty of "positive rights." Look how well that worked out.
This whole subject requires far more extensive treatment than I have time for at the moment. For now, it suffices to say that Obama's dream of court-enforced redistribution is directly connected to the idea of "positive" rights--an idea, not coincidentally, that is shared by many of the Harvard Law professors who now claim credit for Obama's development and contribute heavily to his campaign.
posted by Joel @ 2:38 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Always enjoyed reading on that topic. Will look forward to your elaboration.
Well first off, you might be headed for some very bad marks young man, if any of those professors is actually teaching you.
From observation, I believe that people on the left have a tendency to be very ideological. That is to say they often eschew evidence that does not suit their preconceived notions. This is of course a general human characteristic but it seems far more pronounced in today's left.
We do not know enough of his history to assess how much of a pragmatist Obama would be. His "fairness" comment on the issue of capital-gains tax does not bode well though.
If elected, my guess is that he will be guilty of many of the charges so often levelled at George W. (We’re already witnessing an attempt to “steal the election.”) In fact I contend that the demonization of GWB is one of the drivers leading the rise of Obama. The population with the assistance of media, is conditioned into believing that George was so bad the US has to simply go in the opposite direction without any further thought
The parallels with the rise of Communism and Nazism are quite frightening and I am stunned that a man like Dershowitz fails to see it.
Why don't we start over here and get these rights in order? Did the people elect the left-wing illuminati to help other countries, or our country?
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