To: thames_sider who wrote (11890 ) 5/3/2002 1:05:07 PM From: Neocon Read Replies (1) | Respond to Anyone who is capable of distinguishing between tyranny and just government knows that the positive law is an insufficient measure of justice, and that there must be moral conceptions anterior to it by which to judge. Nor is it sufficient to use the manner of arriving at a law as a test of its propriety, since the majority can behave tyrannically towards minorities, and the legislature may be corrupted. There are basically two kinds of rights: claims we have on the government to do or forebear, and claims we have on private parties of a similar nature. Rights are merely the reciprocal notion to duties. If I have a duty to take care of my son, he has a right to my support. These rights may be natural or they may be positive. Rights that are positive may exceed the inventory of natural rights, as they are found expedient, but positive rights are supposed to be consonant with natural rights, in order to be just. We infer natural rights from the residual claims that the individual has within the political order, among other things. At least, then, the individual enters into the political order to have greater security in his person and property, and to advance his interests in an orderly fashion without recourse to coercion, through ordinary commerce and free deliberation.
