Then you get into positive vs negative rights. We’re very much a negative rights society and you can’t square the two. Negative rights feel good because they don’t infringe on anyone else, whereas a positive right always does. Your positive right is someone else’s lack of a negative right, the opposite isn’t true.

For someone to have a positive right to shelter, for instance, you have to take shelter from someone (or, as we typically do, money from someone to pay for it). Taxation is the one way we’ve managed to get people to at least someone accept positive rights here, but if you ask anyone under 30 who is a Republican why they are, they’ll almost always cite positive rights like welfare. It’s so uncomfortable feeling to us that it becomes the basis of our political philosophy frequently.

It’s never felt comfortable to me to call things like that a right. Public health care is the only sane option, IMO, and we should do it, but calling it a “right“ always feels wrong to me and I think most Americans agree because we’re so strongly in the negative rights camp.