Positive rights advocates have had some success in achieving the lawful creation of positive rights across the States, the most prominent examples being Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public school systems.

But those are also the most expensive line items in Federal and State budgets, massively expanded the public bureaucracies, and had variable success in achieving their stated goals and are some of the most contentious and controversial political topics, with public education in particularly attracting the full brunt of the culture war in recent years in part due to lockdown policies during the pandemic giving more parents more insight into the education their children are (or are not) receiving, and that’s just one positive right.

To put it bluntly, the mere arising of new views around “rights” since 1789 is insufficient if those new views do not represent a qualitative improvement over prior thought, and positive rights advocates have not exactly covered themselves in glory. The mere conjecture of a new positive right in the way activists and advocates proceed is also insufficient; the nature of them is such that you actually do need lawful agreement, and that agreement is only binding in the jurisdiction which created it.