re: #751 buzzsawmonkey

A “negative liberty” is a “thou shalt not”; in Obama’s view, the government being proscribed from unreasonable searches and seizures is a “negative liberty” because it says what cannot be done, rather than what can be done. Saying “you shall not discriminate in voting” is a negative liberty because it prevents discrimination rather than providing, say, redress or reparation for prior grievance. Saying that the government cannot deprive a citizen of property without due process of law is a negative liberty, because it restricts the government; and, as he mournfully notes, there is nothing which affirmatively says that the government can take a citizen’s property to give to someone else in order to further somebody’s notion of justice.

In other words, a “negative liberty” as Obama uses the term is a disparaging view of the civil rights which are intended to protect the individual’s actual liberty from the officious interference of government do-gooders. Those pesky “negative liberties” are a roadblock to his human rights vision of “positive” liberties, i.e., the benefits that he believes it is the function of the government to provide.

Wait a sec, so Obama thinks the Constitution should be a document which outlines the rights of the government, and not the people?

What?