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Entry: Addicted to Guilt Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/addicted_to_guilt#2587 Post contents: Mr. Cundiff's point no. 2, that "rights... always correspond to duties" deserves, if not correction, at least some amplification or explanation. Rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights are understood to be absences of government authority to act. Thus, under the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." and so on. Government's only duty is negative; it must not take certain actions. The same pattern is followed in the Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments impose positive duties upon government in connection with judicial procedure, but their effect is still to limit the authority and scope of government. The Constitution's understanding of rights must be contrasted with many modern uses of the term, which do imply positive duties either of the government towards its citizens or of one citizen to another. Thus we hear of rights to education, to medical care, or to jobs, presumably to be assured by the power of the state. Two contracting parties have always been able to stipulate as to their rights under the terms of an agreement, but in similar fashion, legislation has been enacted over the past several decades conferring implicit contractual rights, outside the specific obligations of any given contract. Accordingly customers have rights with respect to vendors, debtors rights with respect to creditors, renters with respect to landlords, and employees with respect to employers, by fiat of the state. Here there is a sort of analogy to the law of conservation of matter and energy, for the customer cannot be given rights without taking them from the vendor, nor can the debtor enjoy rights without their being at the expense of his creditor, etc. The modern habit of confusing the negative rights guaranteed (NOT granted, because they were pre-existing) under the Constitution with positive rights in the spirit of FDR's "Four Freedoms" or the civil rights laws of the 1960s is rhetorical mischief of the highest order, and one that sound conservatives should take pains to avoid. Sent at: 2008 05 16