‘Driving is not a right — it’s a privilege’

In response to my recent columns on the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles urging 83-year-old widows who prefer to retain their late husbands' surnames to "get their name changed" to match those on Social Security cards issued when they were 16, I received numerous smug and sanctimonious assertions that "Driving is not a right -- it's a privilege."

While we rarely waste time rebutting mere memorized windbaggery, this is such a classic example of internees miseducated in our government youth camps, putting on a sneering demeanor and chanting a memorized sound bite without even considering the meaning of their words, that we will pause here for a moment of analysis.

My "Webster's New World" informs us the primary definition of "privilege" (from the Old French "privilegium," which in turn devolves from the Latin privus -- private -- and Lex -- law) means "a right, advantage, favor or immunity specially granted to one; esp. a right held by a certain individual, group or class, and withheld from certain others or all others."

So a "privilege" is something that most people are not allowed to have. It is, by definition, bestowed upon "one person or group," while being purposely and arbitrarily withheld from the majority.

Let us see if we can come up with an example of a legitimate "privilege."

I own my house. Therefore I have a property "right" to grant or withhold the "privilege" of entry to whomsoever I choose. If I see fit to put up a sign saying only military veterans are allowed in my home, or that left-handers or redheads are barred, I can do that.

Now let's imagine Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and his appointed DMV chief, former Sparks Mayor Bruce Breslow, decide to follow this example. From now on, they will grant the "privilege" of driving in Nevada only to military veterans, and they will systematically withdraw said privilege from left-handers and redheads, whose "licenses" will be summarily revoked.

Do you think that would hold up in court? I don't. I believe the courts would quickly rule that restricting drivers licenses only to military veterans would place an improper hardship on women (just for starters.) I further suspect the courts would hold that left-handers and redheads have the same, ... gee, what's the word I'm searching for here? ... have the same "right" as blondes, brunettes, and right-handers to use the roads funded with their taxes in order to drive to work or wherever else they please.

Privilege stems from ownership. Do Lord Brian and Sir Bruce "own" the roads?

Under the model of the feudal monarchy, the king claimed to own the whole country and everything in it. He could and did grant to his big-time barons and other warlords the "privilege" of hanging miscreant peasants and collecting taxes from the serfs living in given shires.

There was a whole hierarchy of privileges, eventually working its way down to the point where a local, minor lord would grant to one local family the privilege of harvesting pike from a given pond. Those not so privileged, who tried to do these things without permission, could be jailed or even hanged, as famously illustrated in the tale of Robin Hood, arrested for killing one of "the king's deer" (which the king presumably had never so much as set eyes on.)

This does not match our setup here in America. Our forefathers decided individual Americans have almost limitless rights -- so vast they can't all be enumerated. On the other hand, the folks we temporarily elect to public office have limited powers, which we grant to them -- not the other way around.

We should be wary of chanting such slogans as this "privilege, not a right" buffoonery -- taught to us as impressionable children by low-level flunkies in mandatory government propaganda camps -- without examining the real meaning of the words.

George Washington was not required to seek any "rider's license" or "registration plate" to hang over his horse's rump in the 1770s.

So when was this previous unquestioned right to free travel converted by constitutional amendment into a privilege, which by definition can be arbitrarily "granted to some ... and withheld from ... all others"? Never.

Why does this matter? Words are used not only in speech, but also in thought. If we don't know the definitions of the words we're using, our thought becomes muddy. It is then far easier for our would-be masters to dupe us into believing some made-up and undeliverable new right, such as the "right to feel safe" -- supposedly delivered by making us line up and submit to ritual public groping at our airports -- takes precedence over the vital right to travel freely, which our ancestors never imagined we could be convinced to surrender.

Initially, in the very early 20th century, some states decided they could raise revenue to help maintain the highways by charging excise taxes on commercial activities that placed added stress on the newly paved roads (hauling freight or passengers commercially). Operators of such commercially licensed and inspected vehicles were then required to obtain state driver's licenses -- "driving" being a term of art for this commercial activity, not originally considered to impact the right of common folk to travel on the roads.

And now we see where we get when we allow "just a few, limited, reasonable, pragmatic" restrictions to be placed on an unenumerated right.

Go to an airport, today, and try to assert your right to travel freely, without showing your government-issued travel papers and undergoing a humiliating government strip-and-grope. There, you'll find you can even be arrested for making a joke, or saying anything that might upset or puzzle your assigned groper, or the blue-gloved goon assigned to grope your child.

"But that's all necessary for our security!" bleat the well-drilled sheep, ignoring the fact that when government inspectors check the real efficacy of such nonsense, they're able to get their dummy bombs onto the planes a frighteningly large percentage of the time -- as well as the fact that law-abiding passengers carrying their own concealed pistols (a right guaranteed by the Constitution) could have stopped 9/11 from ever happening.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.