And the Government is not allowed to restrict it with any new law. The US Constitution was not made to give you rights, but to restrict the Government from taking them
This is called 'positive rights' and 'negative rights'. Negative rights are your rights and the government is not allowed to restrict them, they prevent the government from doing a thing. Positive rights are where the government is required to act to ensure you actually have the right to something. (e.g. the right to a fair and speedy trial requires the government to set up a courts system that is able to handle the load, they can't just have 1 court for the whole country that has a waiting list of 100 years, some places have "a right to education" which requires the state to set up and fund schools).
Some constitutions & binding declarations of rights have positive and negative rights. E.g. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been interpreted to include positive rights. I have no idea of the US situation.
It would be interesting if 'Freedom of speech' was a positive right. What would happen then...
It's not arguing over words; it's arguing over the concepts which the words represent.
Two distinct ideas appear to have been confounded together under the mantle of "rights" here, and we can't find fault in those seeking to clean up the confusion.
We can, however, find fault with those who seek to intentionally prevaricate in order to artificially apply the connotations earned by one idea to the other, and this includes those governments that try to define goods which must be acquired within society as being within the category of "rights".
Well what do you mean, that's a perfectly legitimate retort to the notion that the right to an attorney is a positive right. You might as well call the right to a trial as a positive right if you're going to call the right to a free attorney a positive right.
The concept of "positive rights" really doesn't make any sense - the purpose of defining rights is to delineate the boundaries of the power of others with respect to the individual; i.e. what the individual retains by virtue of being an individual, and isn't required to sacrifice as a condition of entering into a social context. So how can you designate goods that are acquired within that social context to be "rights"?
Mandates that a particular institution must do one thing or another are outside the scope of the theory of rights - this is just policy, which, in a just and healthy political system, is restrained from transgressing against the rights of individuals, but is by definition incapable of altering the nature of those rights.
The concept of "positive rights" really doesn't make any sense
Eppur si muove (Italian for 'and yet it moves', fabled as what Galileo said when signing his confession that the sun goes around the sun). Some jurisiticions recognise positive rights. Ergo they exist.
outside the scope of the theory of rights - this is just policy
Again, some jurisiticions recognise these as not a mere policy, but as rights of a person.
Some people may recognize the existence of 'flying bananas': yellow objects which propel themselves through the air by their own power.
This is, of course, due to imprecision in those people's use of symbolic identifiers: those who possess a higher-resolution semantic repertoire might instead call the thing being observed a 'canary', and regard it has having little ontological connection to a banana.
This is called 'positive rights' and 'negative rights'. Negative rights are your rights and the government is not allowed to restrict them, they prevent the government from doing a thing. Positive rights are where the government is required to act to ensure you actually have the right to something. (e.g. the right to a fair and speedy trial requires the government to set up a courts system that is able to handle the load, they can't just have 1 court for the whole country that has a waiting list of 100 years, some places have "a right to education" which requires the state to set up and fund schools).
Some constitutions & binding declarations of rights have positive and negative rights. E.g. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been interpreted to include positive rights. I have no idea of the US situation.
It would be interesting if 'Freedom of speech' was a positive right. What would happen then...
(more details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights )