And there you have it! Liberal thinking in a nutshell. When listening to Liberals it's hard to get through all the "help help I'm being oppressed" rhetoric and figure out where they are coming from. But here it is cut down to it's basic level for all to see. It's 60's institutionalized thought where every issue is one of "rights", which is also the basis of the victimhood mentality. Because they couch issues in that way, there are no "two sides to the argument", there's only the evil and the good.
Ryan's larger point is that the people have given power to the government, not the other way around. When the Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were rebelling against a way of life where you only existed as far as the King permitted. So instead of the Government permitting us to exist and dictating what we can or cannot do, what we can and cannot have, our freedoms come from an "inalienable" right to persue personal happiness and bear the fruits of our labors(both good and bad). We 'allow' the government to enforce rules for the common good and provide basic services. The level of these provisions is always up for debate, but Paul Ryan was making the distiction between the two ways of thinking.
As I said before, the origination of this type of thinking is from the 60's from the civil rights movement. And continues today because Liberals, especially the ones who become activists or who think of themselves as intellectuals, refuse to see the USA as anything but oppressors and spreaders of evil.
George Will talks about this in a recent article(a good read btw, but on a different subject)
Before Franklin Roosevelt, “liberal” described policies emphasizing liberty and individual rights. He, however, pioneered the politics of collective rights — of group entitlements. And his liberalism systematically developed policies not just to buy the allegiance of existing groups but to create groups that henceforth would be dependent on government.So you see Toure can call Paul Ryan a racist for saying "Rights come from God", because the "Rights" of black people came from the Government after the Civil Rights Movement. The rights of women also came from the Government through the feminist movement, the rights of the poor come from being recognized by the Government and being granted subsidies.
......
Government no longer existed to protect natural rights but to confer special rights on favored cohorts. As Irving Kristol said, the New Deal preached not equal rights for all but equal privileges for all — for all, that is, who banded together to become wards of the government.
In the 1960s, public-employee unions were expanded to feast from quantitative liberalism (favors measured in quantities of money). And qualitative liberalism was born as environmentalists, feminists and others got government to regulate behavior in the service of social “diversity,” “meaningful” work, etc
Politically, speaking about things in terms of rights is a very powerful tool for the left. It allows them to break down people in to groups and to identify with their cause in the vein of "You are being oppressed, I will fight your oppressors". It also allows them to define their opponents as the 'bad guy'. Watch for Republicans being called "too extreme" for America or<insert state here>.
Countering this kind of thinking is extremely difficult because, remember, they don't see these issues as disagreements that can be argued over. To Liberals it's a battle of good versus evil. When you encounter someone like this it's important to actually realize what you are arguing about. The Liberal is not trying to score debate points against you to convince you he's right, he's more interested in framing you as an evil oppressor of women, blacks, minorities, etc etc.
Take abortion for instance. The conservative says that having an abortion is taking a human life. Liberals say that banning abortion takes away the 'right' of women to do whatever they want with their bodies. Those are two different statements, two different arguments to be held, the debate points for one argument have no bearing on the other. Conservatives have been winning the debate on the sanctity of life, through technology advancements allowing mothers to see their baby earlier and humanizing it in their minds. The number of people who identify as "pro-life" is at an all time high. However if the argument is couched in the Liberal way of thinking, as Conservatives taking away a 'right', then we lose the argument because we are not even debating the same topic. See: Sandra Fluke and Todd Akin.
