Rights and Privilege

As follow up to a previous post, I am taking a moment to articulate thoughts and definitions of right vs. privilege.

A "right" is something people simply have - an entitlement. True rights are inherent and should have very few (realistically zero) restrictions. Rights do not grant any one person value or worth above another. True rights don't change. They are basic and baseline*.

A "privilege" (or the state of being "privileged") is freedom to do, or access to have, something that is limited to some people, even if a large group of people. Privilege is inherently unequal and unfair from a human perspective, and failure to recognize that disparity is tantamount to losing some of the weight and worth of the privilege. Gaining and keeping privilege is dependent on the person or group spending its social, monetary, or emotional currency to obtain and keep it.

From time to time, people groups, or governments on their behalf, will articulate the "rights" the citizenry can count on, but that articulation does not make those identified activities actual rights. They are still privileges. 

In the United States, we have an agreed upon document, the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, that ensure the People of the United States enjoy certain "rights". Let us not forget, however, those "rights" are not actually rights. They are privileges: man-made and destructible. Since they are not inherent to humanity, they are highly susceptible to erosion and loss. If the American people do not, as a whole, work diligently to keep those rights in place, they will erode to the point of non-existence. Some may already have.

Some people admonish to "check your privilege." In the U.S., we may be better served to "check our rights."

* Because some may ask, here is an example of a human-level right: The right to live: once alive, a person has the right to remain alive until their natural death. That death should come as the result of the choices (lifestyle, habits, conduct) of the person, not the choice(s) of another.

Some argue at what point life begins, or whether one person's life so negatively impacts another that one should be snuffed out, but that is not my purpose. My purpose is to show that at their most basic, banal, yet universal level, true rights are not negotiable. Those negotiations (and the opportunity to even negotiate) are privilege.