Negative Liberties are Positive

The Constitution was created to ensure the liberties of the individual and protect the individual against the tyranny of the masses and government. These negative liberties restrict what the government can do to the individual (the smallest minority in America). The Founding Fathers were not evil men that put constraints on civil rights, they saw the corruption of the British government and how it abridged the liberties of American colonists. And they didn't want the new United States of America to become corrupted in the same way, ergo they restrained the government's liberties. This is a GOOD thing.

Gretchen Helfrich interview with Obama, 2001 on NPR
"If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and -- and as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. As radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted -- and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted, and one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that 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 coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And, uh, in some ways we still suffer from that." Rush Limbaugh put me wise to this scary stuff.

Let's read the preamble to the Constitution:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Click here for the Bill of Rights

Where does it say that Americans have negative liberty? Where does it say that health care is an issue? Obama talks about "redistributive change" he really is talking about His form of justice. Mike Rosen wrote in the Rocky Mountain News March 31, 2000: "Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity. Liberals believe in equality of outcome." Because not everyone can be a millionaire, nobody should be. Because not everyone can afford health care, those who can should pay for those who cannot. When He talks about the civil rights movement, He is talking about African-American liberties, liberties that the Republican Party in the 1960s championed. When He talks about redistribution in the context of the civil rights movement, something he talked to Joe the Plumber about, He really means redistribution of non-racial minority money to racial minorities. Dare I say His Presidency is a "reverse-..."? I better not, His Homeland Security has issued a warning on rightwing extremists.

"generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you." He's talking about the Bill of Rights. Yes, these are negative liberties, but they are liberties that the government shall NOT have. SO, is His Presidency saying that this is wrong? Let's read the Bill of Rights as His Presidency would have it:

Amendment I-Congress SHALL MAKE LAWS respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II-A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, SHALL BE infringed.
...
Amendment X-The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are NOT reserved to the states respectively, NOR to the people.