Taking it further, it's worth asking if we're talking about:
1. Freedom TO or
2. Freedom FROM?
Both are valid in discussions of freedom, but I find the west tends to focus considerably more on #1 than #2.
1. Freedom TO or
2. Freedom FROM?
Both are valid in discussions of freedom, but I find the west tends to focus considerably more on #1 than #2.
And then we're back to "you should have the freedom to do anything that doesn't harm someone else" and people get to argue forever about what counts as harm.
Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights.
I think you're probably a better person than this.
All rights that a person possesses implies obligations that everyone else must meet. For example, if I have the right to not be assaulted, that implies the obligation of others to not assault me. The difference between a negative and positive right is that the obligation for a negative right is inaction, but for a positive right it's action.
If you're forced to act in a specific way, you're robbed of your agency and ownership of yourself. What else would you call that?
But under a loser definition, it's fairly obvious that an entity which takes part of the results of your labor under the threat of violence at least partially owns you, and thus it's reasonable to consider tax payers as slaves to their government.
I'm actually more interested in your argument for why they are mutually exclusive concepts.
This is the difference between what I might call philosophical, or perhaps semantic, and practical discussions.
We can define slavery to mean anything we want, up to and including being born. Every human has to eat and breathe to survive, does that mean they're slaves in that way? Sure? Maybe? Who cares.
The practical discussion is how we want to live our actual lives and structure our actual systems of power.
When people talk about "positive rights" (and really, all rights) they are aspirational. Merely creating a law does not change reality. We can create all the laws we want saying that people should not be murdered, but people will in fact, still be murdered, even though it is now against the law.
Similarly we can create a law saying that people should have healthcare access or food, but people will still be unable to see a doctor or get food when they need it. Neither of those laws imply putting anyone into slavery.
At a practical level, human life is better when we band together in larger and larger groups and contribute to the common welfare, however you want to phrase that.
We can, of course, quibble over the size and type of those contributions and how we use them, thats how society should work, but it is incredible bad faith to accuse people who want to use those contributions for, say, healthcare access, of wanting to enslave people.
Anyways, rights exist a priori, regardless of the capacity for any power to enforce said rights. Negative rights don't actually require enforcement because they aren't coercive. Implying rights don't exist because people violate them doesn't make sense, it's irrelevant.
Think through your example about the doctor. If you (a doctor) and I are stranded on an island and I break my leg, the "right to healthcare" would imply that you are obligated to help me, and I have the moral right to coerce you (violently if required) to help me. Would you agree to this proposition?
Now of course most people who hold these beliefs haven't given it any thought beyond "I want people to be safe happy and healthy". But those who have, realise coercive violence is a base requirement and are fine with it, but obviously won't frame their beliefs in that way.
> Anyways, rights exist a priori, regardless of the capacity for any power to enforce said rights. Negative rights don't actually require enforcement because they aren't coercive
Prove it.
> Think through your example about the doctor. If you (a doctor) and I are stranded on an island and I break my leg, the "right to healthcare" would imply that you are obligated to help me, and I have the moral right to coerce you (violently if required) to help me. Would you agree to this proposition?
This a fantasy you've created by deliberately using the wrong definition of the words involved.
The "right to healthcare" means that your government should do its best to make sure people can see doctors and receive healthcare related treatment when they need it.
> The "right to healthcare" means that your government should do its best to make sure people can see doctors and receive healthcare related treatment when they need it.
Yeah ok. I'm gonna bow out of this discussion now, since you're just accusing me of doing what you're in fact doing.
I may have incredible freedoms inside a market, but I have little to no freedom from markets (or capitalism) I have no practical freedom between different economic systems. Capital has eaten it all. I detest being essentially forced to participate in a system I don't believe in where the alternative (living in the woods alone) isn't really an alternative at all. It's Moloch or the wilderness.
"Freedom from..." is generally used to form phrases like "Freedom from hunger", "Freedom from homelessness", "Freedom from being thrown in the back of an unmarked black van by unmarked people wearing masks". I don't know what version of America you've experienced, but the one I know absolutely does not focus on this notion of "freedom from".
People tend to think that when you get the government involved with something you are passionate about, that passion will now influence the government. Still, the reality is that you're handing control over that passion to the government.
This is how a "Christian America" would play out. Whatever beliefs are held by those in power would be written into law, despite the actual opinions of America's Christians. The government would declare itself an authority over Christianity and would start telling churches how to operate.
This was already partially true in red states before marriage equality (and probably still true today, to some extent). Progressive churches that believed same-sex marriages were holy in the eyes of God were told by the state that they could not perform same sex marriages - in some cases, even barring a pure non-binding ceremony as a form of "attempted marital fraud".
If you are an American Christian and you care about your right to worship freely without government interference, you should cherish secularism. Enforcing the Bible as a matter of law means that interpretations of the Bible you disagree with will be enforced against you. Requiring prayer in schools will lead to vicious fights between teachers and parents over which prayers are the "correct" ones. Literally any piece of scripture you write into law will become controversial even amongst Christians. But still, people insist that their freedom would somehow be enhanced.
And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a Christian America would turn non-Christians, especially Muslims and Jews, into a lower class of citizens.
It is unfortunate that he current powers controlling all branches of our government are primarily interested in taking rights away, and that those who voted for it think that this is freedom.
By and large many issues in America today are due to have abandoned Christian norms on both ends of the political spectrum.
i put much less priority on "not interfering" than you, perhaps because i'm a priviledged white anglo middle class dude, or perhaps because i believe different things about the world than you. such as: there's always interfering, it cannot be escaped, it can only be shaped.