Flip flopping on positive rights

PajamasMedia posts a philosophical trainwreck from a student who is learning the distinction between negative and positive rights, but hasn't actually learned how to apply that difference coherently to his own ideas:

But this isn’t a call to end all social welfare programs. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. This is a call for the proper approach to government assistance. Instead of the absurd positive rights approach, we need one of responsibility. I shouldn’t get food or shelter from others because I have a right to them, but rather because it’s the responsible thing for them to do. The government shouldn’t give me welfare or food stamps because I have a right to them, but rather because it is irresponsible for a government to let its citizens starve or go homeless.

But if the outcome is the same in the two approaches, then what’s the point in making a distinction anyway? Well, besides the fact that you always want to carry a correct political and philosophical outlook, the outcome really isn’t the same. Yes, those who buy into the fallacy of positive rights and those who don’t want to help those unable to help themselves. However, those who reject positive rights are looking for the best and most practical way to provide assistance.

A proper attitude towards providing relief for those in need lends itself to flexibility and knocks the bloated, gargantuan, and ineffective entitlement programs we are saddled with off of their pedestals. It smashes the stone tablets they’ve been engraved on for far too long. By doing so it opens us up to compromise on how to fix our monolithic yet utterly defunct aid programs. It lets us make minor changes like, say, private savings accounts in Social Security, without being utterly crucified.

So instead of being an outright positive right, welfare programs now become cynical, pragmatic, crypto-positive rights because while it may not the positive right of the welfare recipient to receive welfare, it is the positive responsibility of the government to make sure that its citizens are not homeless or starving. By simply shifting the wording from "I have a right to" to "they have a responsiblity to" you are simply reframing the point of reference here regarding the transaction from the individual asserting the right, to the group that is having the responsibility to provide for the services asserted in the right. The only shift here is one of perspective, not of philosophy.

Even if this were to be a fundamental philosophical shift, and it isn't, it would still leave the state with a responsibility to meddle in everything from emergency health care, to home ownership, to retirement. If America had shifted its system of slavery from one based on race, to one based on right of conquest and legal punishment modeled after the Greek and Roman systems of slavery, there would be little doubt that any philosophical shift aside, the underlying issue remained intact.