Give Me My Negative Rights, Please
Both the supreme laws of the US and the State of Idaho are founded on principles of negative rights (basically, the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and property). They are not founded on established positive rights (like the “right to a given wage” or the “right to healthcare,” or the “right to birth control”).
There’s good reason for that. The establishment of positive rights tends to require extensive violation of negative rights. Why?
Things like healthcare, given wages, and birth control are not free. When we establish a right to them it requires us to confiscate the productivity (or even lives) of others to provide those positive rights to some. And usually, the coercion is ultimately handled with the threat of violence or its actual execution.
Our founding fathers understood this principle well and structured our republican governance model to strictly limit the power of governments to the primary goal of protecting our negative rights and strictly delimited them from establishing extensive positive rights.
Scott Herndon understands this basic principle. He won’t promise us things that will require him to enslave and/or kill others to fulfill. Rather, he will strive to protect our natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and property as delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Idaho State Constitution.
That’s why I’m voting for Scott Herndon to represent us in the Idaho State Senate this November.
Jane Purdy
Laclede
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