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by tdb7893 2452 days ago
I think that this distinction isn't widely understood as the definition of privilege. If you look it up in a dictionary privileges you'll see a lot of definitions where privileges are defined as a special case of rights so they are most definitely not mutually exclusive

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege

1 comments

That's just reinforcing the point. Privilege is a special "right" rather than a universal one that should be held by everyone, something like the right to be called doctor (held only by someone with a doctorate) as opposed to the right to due process (which should be held by everyone).

Due process is a human right in a way that having a title is not.

Due process should be accessible to everyone but until that's actually the case it's still a privilege of the people who have it. The fact that other people should have it doesn't mean it's not a privilege to the people that do.

(It's still a right by the way, as I said it can be both)

Edit: Anyway, I don't feel the need to argue this since it's just a semantic argument but the general thesis is that I found your narrow definition of privilege to be surprising compared to how I've experienced people using it but English differs over geography so idk.

I think the heart of this is the is/ought distinction.

When you have a right to free speech and then someone puts you in jail for exercising it, it isn't that you don't have the right, it's that your right is being infringed.

Calling it a privilege that you don't have any time someone is infringing on your rights would mean that nobody's rights could ever be infringed, since any time they were infringed it would merely mean that you didn't have them to begin with. But you do. People have human rights even when someone is violating them.