Positive to positive, negative to ground.

"A religion is an organized body, not an individual, so it is different."

Nope. A religion is a belief-system which generally responds to certain kinds of questions. Scholars of religion sometimes argue about whether moral systems like Confucianism qualify. But no scholar of religion confuses creed with congregation. And none doubt the religious expressions of those who have chosen to worship outside of organized communities.

"The very distinction of 'positive rights' and 'negative rights,' while certainly a real distinction, is still loaded with value judgments"

So you keep saying; which leads me to believe that you think that there is something "negative" about negative rights and "positive" about positive rights. ( I wonder what you make of the "value judgements" implied by batteries and magnets? )

However, these terms are free of any value. All we need to know is that my freedom of speech only requires you to be passive for me to exercise it. If however, I claim that my right to free speech requires you to post my ravings on your blog, I've turned it into a positive right I can't exercise without your active support.

If I truly believed that the terms "positive" and "negative" were value judgements, I might hesitate to state that I always value the negative and am skeptical about whether the burdens imposed by the positive can be justified.

All rights which can be exercised by being left alone and which make no claims on others should be allowed.

"There's no such thing. Resources are naturally limited, and every human being that exists takes up space and resources, as well as having an inherent stake in the Marketplace of Ideas. The more ideas out there, the more yours are going to be crowded out, unless you can convince others to see your point-of-view. Therefore, even freedom of speech is not without its negative side."

WOW. Just WOW.

That explains a lot.

I myself beg to differ. I hold, as did many of the Founding Fathers, that an idea is the only property which multiplies when another takes it. And that this is a good thing.

Perhaps, if I were a rampaging egomaniac, I might feel threatened by others' expressing their thoughts. But I believe that ideas, like art, belong to others the moment they're released into the wild.

Nor do I believe that the market of ideas is a zero-sum game in which Dissident and I cancel each other out by virtue of our stances on Capitalism. Far from it. I believe that what others can glean from the back-and-forth is not a mutual annihilation, but at the very least a few more sources to look up for more nuanced reading on Communism and Capitalism.

However, all this ignores the very real fact that my ability to whistle a tune in my shower takes absolutely nothing from you. If you feel threatened by my exercise of this negative Right in the abstract, then its your problem.

And its precisely because negative Rights can be exercised without others even being aware that their exercise is so darn difficult for those who ARE threatened to quash.

Of course, the public exercise of negative Rights is the epitome of tolerance.

"However, it must again be said that there is no inherent value to anything. Even the best of rights can be (and frequently are) used to oppress others. I can use my freedom of speech, for example, to insist that blacks are inhuman and deserve to be treated as such, or I can use it to build people up and insist that we all deserve essentially equal treatment. Is it ironic that you say the above whilst simultaneously insisting that rights are inherently valuable without empirical or analytical proof? That is a faith-based assertion if I ever heard one."

Erm. "Rights are inherently valuable?" I never lumped everything called "Rights" together. And I even tried to illustrate how negative rights are positive while positive rights are often negative.

But we've already done this one to death. EVERYONE denied their negative rights has argued that they ought to have them; from those attempting to form a State to the lone anarchist. This seems to be the one constant of human history; that many have argued to limit the rights of others, but none have argued for less freedom for themself.

However, all this is moot if we cease to treat some positive rights as trumping individual rights.

"Please clarify."

I suggest that you educate yourself about the value-free distinction between positive rights and negative rights.

However, as an Anarchist, I see freedom as freedom from the interference of others where I have harmed none. I do not see freedom as something requiring me to steal resources from others by proxy through goons with guns.

Dante