You can drive a car around on your private property all day long if you want to; have it at. Give the keys to your kid and let him do it, too. No one will stop you.
Access to the PUBLIC roads and permission to DRIVE on them is regulated (licensed) to protect the PUBLIC. It is a privilege.
But let's follow your line of logic for a moment and presume it is a right. Along with all of our rights come the RESPONSIBILITY to excercise them with care, so that they do not impinged on the rights of others. SOCIETY has determined that is it the responsibility of individuals to demonstrate an ability to exercise the proper operation of a motor vehicle before being allowed acces to public roads.
This woman chose to exercise her rights in an irresponsible manner and is facing the consequences of her choice. Boo hooo. Actions have consequences. Heaven forbid.
Elsewhere on the thread it mentioned the creation of children. Parenting your children is a NATURAL right; however, if one abuses the children, neglects the children, refuses to carefully fulfill the responsibilties that accompany the right to have children, they will lose the right to parent them.
You see a danger in confusing rights with privileges. I do, too, but in a different way. Everytime we slap the term "right" onto something, we empower the government to enforce our ability to exercise that right, and to protect it.
Like the folks that claim medical care is a right. Medical care is a service, a privilege, not a RIGHT. But because enough folks have bought into the lie that it's a right, we now have the federal government stepping in to enforce it's delivery, while stealing from our pockets to pay for it.
Tread carefully, my friend. You seem to be suggesting that rights do not come without responsibilities, and freedoms are somehow free, when this is distinctly NOT the case. It's actually this line of careless thinking and course of action that INCREASES the reach of the government and leads to an erosion of our freedoms, because the nanny-staters impose more laws to "protect us" from folks who aren't responsible in the first place.
I have NEVER even suggested that rights come without responsibility. Where did you get that?
ALL of our rights are NATURAL rights. Have you not read any of our founding fathers' papers? It is a PRIVELEDGE if a service or object is provided to an individual by the government at the expense of others and can be withdrawn without consulting the courts at all. (Or maybe you would argue that we have to ask the Supreme Court before Congress can ditch welfare?)
The roads are for ALL PEOPLE to use. I pay for the roads and the roads are for public use. I do not ask that others pay for anything that would benefit me personally.
The government does not provide me with a car or insurance or upkeep on the car.
Equating free travel on public roads with medicare is a strawman argument because the two are not equiable.
Was it a "privelege" to travel public roads before there were motorized vehicles? Certainly not!
I have also never argued that any right is inviolate. I have simply stated (over and over and over) that if the government wants to deny your right to drive (just as they can deny your right to vote if you are in prison or yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theather, etc.) the the government must show COMPELLING EVIDENCE that it is necessary to deny that right. Our society is based on mobility. It is practically impossible in most places to not have a car and access to the public roads. To deny a pregnant (at the time of the first offense) woman the right to drive to the doctor and to take her children to school and to get groceries and to drive to a better job would put an undue burden on her.
Do you think she would have gotten such harsh sentences if she had had the money to hire a GOOD lawyer to defend her in court? Others have cavalierly dismissed this as "Well, she accepted the terms, so she has to live with them!" Jeez, how cold hearted can you get? Does anyone think that the overworked, underpaid, barely competent public defender did more than cut the easiest deal he could? Do you think that she REALLY got a fair trial with her public defender against a prosecutor with a grudge who has probably publicly sworn to put her in jail for 10 to 20 years and an unlimited budget? Or do you think she thought, "I am so screwed. I had better take this deal because it is the best I can get with this idiod PD." Remember this is West Palm Beach, and it is probably the same prosecutor going after Rush. Fairness and justice is not in his interest.
I tend to think the latter.