The
Future of Freedom Foundation| The
Future of Freedom Foundation |
|
|||||||||||||
|
November
26, 2007 (submitted 11/21/07) What's so comical about their antics is that the issue demonstrates that politicians are locked into bad assumptions from top to bottom. Start with driver's licenses. In one debate Sen. Chris Dodd said driving "is a privilege not a right." That's a common belief. But it's incoherent. In common parlance, a privilege is something someone grants to someone else. If I let my teenager borrow my car, that's a privilege I extend to him. Since it's my car, I have the legitimate authority to do this. I may set the terms, and I can revoke the privilege at will. My child has no rights in the matter. He is in the position of a supplicant. (When he grows up and I need to borrow his car, the roles will be reversed.) This sort of privilege, then, grows out of property ownership. The owner sets the rules of use, and no one may rightfully use the property without the owner's permission. Privileges regarding use are an owner's to bestow -- or not. What does a driving privilege mean when we're talking about adults and the government? Where does the government get the authority to bestow, deny, or revoke this alleged privilege? Under American political theory, the government supposedly rules by the consent of the governed. Sometimes it is held that the government is us. If that is true, the grantor of the driving privilege must ultimately be the people. Who is the grantee? Also the people. So we the people grant us the people the privilege to drive. That makes no sense. But it does make sense if we realize that this theory of government is a fraud. The government is something over and above the people with the power to issue decrees we are legally required to obey under threat of punishment. True, each of us gets an infinitesimal say in who holds office, but that doesn't change the essential fact that once candidates are in office, they issue orders and we defy them at our peril. If you don't like the orders, you are instructed to exercise your "power" to elect a new government. Good luck with that. The upshot is that the government-issued driver's license is incompatible with a truly free society. So are government-owned roads, for that matter. We may confidently predict that owners of private roads, which have existed through history, would require drivers to have proof of competence, but that is a far cry from the system of identification that constitutes today's driver's license. Under the REAL ID legislation passed by Congress the link between identification and permission to drive will take a quantum leap. If Americans shouldn't need the government's permission to drive, why should so-called illegal aliens, who are merely undocumented residents, need it? Presidential candidates find it in their interest to one-up their rivals in showing how tough they want to be on "border security." Denying undocumented residents permission to drive is part of their posturing. So are the threats to imprison employers who hire them. How odious. People who have no other way of getting into the United States sneak in to make a better life through hard work. Preventing them from driving and threatening their prospective employers are flagrant attacks on innocent people's ability to improve their lot in life. As we head
into Thanksgiving, let us contemplate this disgrace to America's noble
heritage.
Gary D. Barnett is a Policy Advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) and President of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana. Tibor Machan is a Hoover research fellow, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Alabama, holds the R.C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at Chapman University’s Argyros School of B and E and is a research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute and Hoover Institution (Stanford). He is an advisor to Freedom Communications. His most recent book is Libertarianism Defended, (Ashgate, 2006).
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association."
Scott McPherson is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Samuel Bostaph is head of the economics department at the University of Dallas and an academic advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation
Anthony Gregory is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, January 2006) and Terrorism & Tyranny (Palgrave, 2003), and is policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation
Benedict LaRosa is a historian and writer and serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation
Bart Frazier is program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email. |
Must History Always Repeat Itself? What Freedoms Did Americans Celebrate on the Fourth? Yes to Recriminations against Iraq Policymakers A Bogus Libertarian Defense of War Do Americans Owe Service to the Nation? Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? The Failed Legacy of Interventionism America's Anti-Militarist Tradition The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Busy Bush Has Time to Run the World Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain's Life A Day in the Life of an Unwilling "Federal Agent" Complete Archives for The Future of Freedom Foundation  |
|||||||||||
