The positive/negative rights thing is basically the libertarians adopting a simplified and less-nuanced reading of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "Two Concepts o

The positive/negative rights thing is basically the libertarians adopting a simplified and less-nuanced reading of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty" http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pdf http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pd... It's better to go to the originals on things like this then to read what they've become in the political folk mythology on the internets.