Image

President Obama and Negative Rights

User avatar
Barack Obama concisely sums it up:

It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
Exactly.

Imagine you are on a desert island with only one other person, and you are hungry. His negative right would constrain you from taking his food. But your positive right would compel him to give you his food.

Multiply that by millions and millions of people, and you can see how negative rights leads to exploitation of the worker, and how positive rights leads to the liberation of the worker.
~
And that is one of the biggest problems with Amerikkka's KKKonstitution. That is, the warped concept of "negative liberties" constrains the government. It says that the government has no right to help its people. That the people lack the positive right to demand what they need.

So, the new constitution must be reformulated with positive liberties. That is, the right of the people to get what they need. To demand food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, a media free of fascist thought, a world without Zionism, etc.

In short, a proper constitution would be an living and breathing orgy of emotional eruptions that would satisfy the peoples' cries for social and economic justice.

Remember: If something, anything, is demanded, then someone else ought to be compelled to provide it. It is your positive right that makes this happen.

God Damn Amerikkka! God Damn the Amerikkkan KKKonstitution!

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can demand from your country.

Does this mean Obama is going to buy me that XBOX for my Dacha that I demand? Now that would be something positive.

User avatar
Our Constitution is a victim, a victim of narrow minded bigots who sought to strangle the most beneficent power in the universe - government! The Constitution itself yearns to be free, free to govern, free to control, free to plunder usher in an enlightened age of redistributive economic justice. If we hope to see the Socialist Utopia of Next Tuesday anytime soon, we must break the shackles of our founding capitalist pig dog patriarchal "fathers" which bind our glorious document hand and foot, and smother its nurturing urges for the Greater GoodTM. Listen! Can you hear it? It begs, it pleads, it implores - set me free! I'm a Living Document! Send me The One to appoint judges who will lead me from the dungeon of conservative despair into the sunlit uplands of liberal joy! O, Comrades, the day is at hand!

User avatar
The original copy of the so-called "Bill of Negative Rights" discovered in the attic of Obama's crazy uncle:

Image
All we need to do is to counter it with the Bill of Positive Rights.

User avatar
It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
And people say that no one talks like Ayn Rand villains. (I wish I had come up with this turn of phrase).

User avatar
Professor has emailed me that right now he is too busy spreading the progressivism around, but he asked me to share this quote with the collective:
-----------------------------------------

We were beaten to a Positive Bill of Rights by a Congressman:
[BLOCKQUOTE]U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D. Toledo) whipped the crowd up before Mr. Obama took the stage yesterday telling them that America needed a Second Bill of Rights guaranteeing all Americans a job, health care, homes, an education, and a fair playing field for business and farmers.
[/BLOCKQUOTE]The quote is in the last paragraph of the linked story.

My favorite part is that the crowd was actually "whipped up" by that, and probably not to lynch Ms. Kaptur.

User avatar
I seem to recall the FDR proposed a very similar "Second Bill Of Rights" in 1944.

Also, Marcy Kaptur. Didn't she make some rather "choice" remarks following the 9/11 attacks? The name stands out to me but I don't remember exactly what she did now.


 
POST REPLY