“Driving is not a right. It is a privilege.”
So you keep saying. Say it as often as you like, you will never make it true.
In the US, if not in leftist minds, that which is not forbidden is allowed. If allowed (rightfully and not as a matter of bad law), it is among the freedoms that we humans enjoy as gifts from the Creator of the universe. What, in your mind, is the difference between such freedoms and a “right?”
“With the exception of Am-track everything I mentioned is a private form of transportation. Trailways, Greyhound and Mega Bus are not public transportation. Taxis are privately owned, as is UBER and Lyft. Even many trains are run as private entities. They can also take a plane.”
To quote wiki, “Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, or mass transit) is a shared passenger-transport service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, carpooling, or hired buses, which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.
Public transport modes include city buses, trolleybuses, trams (or light rail) and passenger trains, rapid transit (metro/subways/undergrounds etc) and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail.”
Now, as a practical matter, even those modes not seen as “public” under this definition are impractical for most purposes and most people.
Few people can afford to take a taxi to work every day, or to charter a plane to take them on vacation. The only thing that makes Americans adequately mobile in the 21st century is the privately owned automobile, and that is useless if the government forbids one to drive.
“Also owning a car is by no means a minimal expense. Taking Mega Bus and even flying is often times cheaper than driving a car, depending on destination and travel time.”
What are you, a leftist? The expense of driving is completely irrelevant to the question of whether mobility, and thus driving, is a right. Don’t change the subject.
“If there is a right to drive, is there also a right to own a car?”
The right to own and maintain a car at your own expense, as with the right to buy a home at your own expense, is so obvious that only the mendacious would bring it up.
“If so and one is unable to afford a car, should the government provide a car for your use, similar to how they will provide a lawyer for your defense?”
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Recognizing a right to adequate legal representation in cases that might result in the loss of liberty or life does not imply rights in other, completely unrelated areas. Stop wasting time with foolish consistencies.
“At the time of the Constitution”
That is the equivalent of the “only muskets existed in 1789, so the 2nd Amendment only applies to muskets” crapola bruited about by the gun grabbers.
“If a personal form of transportation was a right”
Stop trying to change the terms of my argument. It is fundamentally dishonest to put words in someone’s mouth because that argument is easier to rebut than the one actually put forward.
It goes without saying that the Founding Fathers would have agreed that a man has a right to ride a horse that he owns, unless a court or other legally constituted authority makes an exception for good and sufficient cause. A man has a right to ride a horse he owns, and a man has a right to drive a car he owns.
Of course, the Founding Fathers would probably have framed it in the language of liberty rather than “rights.” A man has the freedom to ride a horse he owns, and a man has the freedom to drive a car he owns.
“why didn’t the framers of the Constitution wright an amendment into the Bill of Rights that required everyone be provided a horse or other suitable form of transportation?”
Because they weren’t drooling leftist morons.
“Your argument is one of personal desire.”
Road apples. Mobility is much more important than personal desire. Very often in human history it has been the difference between survival and extermination. Even in the US today it is often the difference between employment and destitution.
“A personal desire is not a right.”
You say that as though you were stating a general principle. What about a personal desire to choose your own religion, or to wed, become a vegetarian, or move to a different state? Does the government have standing to interfere with these freedoms? And, if not, are they not rights?
“it is not unalienable that you do not have a driver’s license or a car.”
Once again, I never said there was a right to own a car. Those are your words, inserted because you think it is easier to deny a right to own a car than to rebut what I actually said.
If an American has an unalienable right to mobility, which he does, then he has an unalienable right to seek and obtain the means by which he becomes mobile, which means that he has a right to buy a car at his own expense. Further, if he has a right to obtain the means of mobility, then he has a right to use those means to go where he wants to go.
“The lack of said license or vehicle may cause one more difficulty in moving about, but it doesn’t deny ones right to free movement.”
So, the government could require us all to wear a ball and chain, because mobility impaired is not mobility denied? I mean, we could still get around—except for young children, the sick, the crippled, and the elderly—so by your standard our free movement would not be denied. We could still get around; it would just be less convenient.
You *really* need to take five or ten years of intensive study and think this through.
Your arguments, though voluminous are just plane retarded.
There is definitely a right to travel freely. The idea that the means to travel are part of that right are not nearly as crazy as the specious right to privacy or the even greater travesty the right to an abortion
I apologize for my nastiness. Though i do not necessarily believe that there is an actual ‘right to drive’ there is certainly a right to travel and therefore the means to travel must be available.