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I think there's two levels of reality that get mixed up on this. Let me explain. Around the turn of the last century, there were no cars. No one would have dreamed of such a silly idea as "driving" a horse on common roads being a "privilege". Take away somone's horse and you'd better give him due process.
Then someone produced and drove the first car. At that point, it was neither right nor privilege, it was just driving. To call driving a "right" would have been redundant at the least. It would have been the equivalent of saying "you have the right to walk to the store". Yeah, so what?
That's the philosophical level and it was the only level that existed before the black-robed tyrants and their guild partners in barratry and extortion intervened.
They played on the public's fear incrementally to judicially and legislatively convert (split infinite necessary) a right to a privilege so that we have what we have to-day: rampant extortion, highway robbery, kidnapping, id checks under threat of violence carjacking and other crimes (if the same actions were taken by the badgeless).
At that level, I absolutely stand on my right go from A to B by whatever means I choose so long as it doesn't harm another human being.
At the legal level, since there are so many mafia thugs and most of the sheep confuse the two levels and accept the statist view, I choose to pay the protection fee and accept qualified ownership of my car and bike and do the best I can to thwart the thugs' further extortion attempts with the limited process the system offers (and usually do quite well, I might add). I will leave the argument of "right" or "privilege" at that level to my betters here and elsewhere but I do read about it with interest.
The statists, I've noticed, very often are not explicit about which level they're talking about. It would be more accurate (or at least less inaccurate) to say, "the law of state X treats driving as a privilege." It's a legal opinion, not a metaphysical certainty like "driving is a privilege" makes it sound. Of course, it wouldn't serve their agenda to make that distinction.
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