Driving is not a privilege. There are no privileges in this country. The government doesn’t enumerate the citizens’ privileges. It’s a small difference, but one that means the difference between freedom and enslavement.
That being said I don’t have a particular problem with DUI checkpoints either. Driving is a right, a right that can and should be taken away if the associated responsibilities are not met. Got to verify somehow. But they have to be conducted in a way that respects individual rights, not one that treats the citizens as though they are exercising a privilege.
A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth. By contrast, a right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from the moment of birth.
I was thinking about that too. There is something where if they are looking at you for one crime, in this case drunk driving, they can’t decide to search your car for no reason unless you have like a handgun or something laying on the seat.
Its like if you call the police for vandalism to your house and they come over and decide to search your belongings and find pot, they can’t arrest you for that from what I remember. I could be wrong tho.
Nope. Even by your definition, we have the right to drive. We’re born with brains and arms and legs and free will to purchase and operate an automobile. We don’t have a special entitlement or immunity from the state that lets us drive. Granted, to your point the state has it wrong in claiming that a right is a privilege, but I don’t care. It’s kind of like how the state just granted the privilege to marry to gays. It’s usually worded as the “right to marry” is it not? People still know right from law on occassion. The government has most things wrong in 2011.
You hypothetical would need a lot more detail to answer. Was the pot in plain sight? Was it hidden but in a spot the police would reasonably need to look in carrying out their duty to investigate your vandalism complaint? If you called and said your detached shed was broken into and they find weed in the shed that’s admissible. If they find weed in a cigar box in your bedroom dresser drawer when they were called about a shed burglary that’s probably not going to be admissible (unless you told them you keep the key to the shed in the box in your dresser and when they went to look for it they found the pot).
As for the whole good cop/bad cops thing, I think there are more good cops than bad but the ones generally law abiding citizens get to deal with most often are usually the lowest ranked and most likely to be bad. You don’t get assigned traffic duty because you’re at the top of your profession.
That last point is a good one. Along those same lines, I have something else to add. A good friend of mine’s brother is a police officer in City of Rochester. He mainly deals with calls that are related to gang violence. Also, his patrol area is well known gang violence area. A typical night for him is being surrounded by, and standing up to thugs. Constantly watching his back, and just generally dealing with the SCUM of the earth.
I can TOTALLY see how that environment turns a good intentioned cop into a cynical bastard. You see so much bad, that you start just assuming that everyone is bad. It’s rough. I’m not saying my friend’s brother is like that. I’m just saying that the stories that I hear from him are really shocking, and maybe we need to see it from their point of view, too.
Ya I guess it was a bad example. I am just saying if a cop comes to your house because your car was broken into but decided to stroll through your house and go through your stuff for no reason looking for something unrelated, that’s illegal. My thought was if they ask you at a check point questions about drinking but see stuff in your back seat, they have no right to search it unless there was some cause that you were doing something illegal like your car reeked of pot, weapons, etc. They needed cause to search the rest of your car and you should have said no to be honest.
It is true. I know some good cops on all levels of enforcement and I know quite a bit of scummy ones. It takes a long time to build a departments reputation but only one bad cop to destroy it.
A right is something you are born with, and you will
die with, granted to you by your “Creator” (whatever you
imagine He/She/It/Them to be). A privilege is granted to
you by the King, General, Church, or the State, and may be
revoked at any time, if one loses favor. This is usually
caused by a failure “consider the king”, a failure to pay
the “royalty”, tax, indulgence, tithe, license fee, etc.
You don’t have a right to drink alcohol at any age just because you were born with a mouth.
You don’t have a right to kill someone just because you were born with free will and hands to choke someone.
You don’t have a right to drive.
Open up your wallet and look a that plastic card with your picture on it… That’s your special entitlement granted by the state that allows you to drive, also known as your license.
Actually you do have the right to drink alcohol at any age provided the owners(parent) of you(property) say it is ok.
Driving is a privilege and like I have said before, you actually give up rights to drive.
If you were a sovereign New Yorker you would have the right to travel(drive) but most people are not Sovereign New Yorkers. lol
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I think I heard a very similar quote in Nazi Germany. Scary.
If you want to understand rights and responsibilities vs privilege then read Good to be King by Michael Badnarik. I’ll just say that my ability to drink or drive or speak or fuck wasn’t given to me by my government and can’t be revoked, it can only be taken by force. Just because they’ve already taken a right and given it back in the form of a privilege doesn’t change what it is. A privilege would cease to exist if the government ceased to exist. If our government dissolved tomorrow I wouldn’t be sitting in my car going “Well fuck me which pedal is the decelerator and which is the velocitator?”
FYI the word “privilege” appears zero times in the declaration of independence. Four times in the constitution. Twice in reference to citizens of any particular state have all the “privileges and immunities” afforded them by the several states aka federal government (so these would cease to exist if the fed ceased to exist), once in reference to habeus corpus (a government process that would cease to exist with no government), and once saying congressman are privileged from arrest during sessions of congress (arrest doesn’t exist without a government.)
I don’t mean to nitpick but it’s important for Americans to understand rights versus privileges. It saddens me when people can’t understand the difference between a right they were born with and a privilege so generoustly given to them by the government.
It really is too bad that we don’t bother with it anymore, the constitution I mean.