‘The Government Cannot Bestow Dignity’

Alex Pfeiffer
The Daily Caller
6/26/2015

…Thomas’ dissent focused on the idea of negative rights, “As one later commentator observed, ‘[L]iberty in the eighteenth century was thought of much more in relation to ‘negative liberty’; that is, freedom from, not freedom to, freedom from a number of social and political evils, including arbitrary government power,’” writes Justice Thomas in dissent.

Thomas connects this to disprove the notion that same-sex couples have a right to a government entitlement, writing, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.”…

…“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”…

 
Read the entire article at The Daily Caller.
 

 
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