I personally have a problem with this one. On the one hand I certainly want sick people to get well and be treated and for people to own their own home, get a good education, have decent job but don't feel that it's a RIGHT. Much of the Political Dissention in the U.S. today centers around RIGHTS. Who mandates that some of these things that I think of as a privilege are now a right?
Jefferson wrote that rights come from the Creator and privilege is granted by the government. Since you profess atheism, there is a quandary. Traveling from one place to another is a right; driving there on a government-provided highway is a privilege.
God doesn't really give "rights", He gives blessings. If someone chooses to be in a relationship with Him, then they have a "right" to the blessings. If someone chooses not to have a relationship with Him, they have the "right" to make it the best they can on their own.
In my country, political discussion is also about rights but hardly ever about privileges because the latter belong to people in office like the Federal President having some privileges. Normal people don't have any privileges in the true sense of the word. Those who have the money needed can naturally afford certain things that others can't but no one would qualify that as a privilege. If at all, the word is used ironically. Rights are mandated by either the constitution or by laws. For example, people wanted to have legislation providing child care rights for everyone and they eventually got it. Now communities are forced to provide childcare facilities because people are legally entitled to get a child care place for their children.
I didn't say anything about the Creator specifying rights. I just said it was Thomas Jefferson's opinion: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —"
Writing only in secular theory, it’s a philosophical paradox in that there are rights and then there are earned rights which some deem to be privileges. To me, a privilege is nothing more than a social advantage that someone has over another. Men vs women, white vs black and all the social psychological constructs and persons which submit themselves to the “greater over lesser” mentality. Again, in secular terms, if one examines the reality of things, there is only one right and even that is sketchy: the right to life All other “rights” are earned rights. E.g. Liberty isn’t free, it’s earned. Whether by something quite complicated like the shedding of blood or the simplicity of casting a vote, it’s earned. Negate one or the other and we will experience another right: The right to give up our freedom. Now, our Bill of Rights is an idealistic standard by which all American goals are to be set but alas, they have to be fought for and earned in order to see them come to fruition if only for a short period of time until we must earn them once again even if it is against those who are so “privileged” to be in leadership positions.
Even more sketchy in the current political climate is the fact that some special interest groups have more "rights" than the rest of us. Of particular concern to me is our right to free speech, and the limitations being imposed on that right by hysterical politics.
@Beth Gallagher How about "Executive Privilege", or "Endowed Privilege" whereby guys who are representatives of foreign governments are exempted from obeying simple laws here, like traffic violations? Frank
@Beth Gallagher Thank you! Try as I might, I just couldn't think of the correct term, so thought up a few sounding applicable! Frank