Simple Truth: Privilege is the Antithesis of Liberty

Illustration:  Consider two families living in the same country.  The first family can only work where the government allows, they can only go where the government allows.  The phrase "Papers, please" is something they hear, or expect to, regularly.  The second family can do more-or-less whatever they want.  The work where they want, or not at all.  They go where they please.

The second family does not have Liberty, they have Privilege.  You can see it today in North Korea and China, as the Government's lackeys have wealth, and power, and status, and the normal people have nothing.  You could see it in the old USSR.  You can see it in Viet Nam.  More and more you can see it in European nations which seem Hell-bent on embracing neo-Marxism.  You see it in our own Governing class.

Explaination:  Privilege is not Liberty.  Liberty is a state of being in which no one has any claims on you.  This state can exist in more or less absolute forms, until it even reaches pure anarchy- which loses any semblance of true Liberty.  Privilege is when some have what is disallowed to others.  It exists when the majority are not allowed to have a certain thing, or do a certain thing, but that a special class can.  This mostly exists in government: our Congress regularly exempts itself from its own laws, for instance.  In a Socialist State it can exist at the bottom as well.

When those who do not make enough, on their own, to support their families reject jobs which pay more- because the increase will be enough to remove them from welfare eligibility, but not enough to sustain them at the lifestyle to which they have become acustomed, that is an instance of Privilege.  When those who do not produce anything of value are given the fruits of my produce.  When they are allowed, even encouraged, to consume without contributing, that is Privilege.

At every turn Privilege clashes with Liberty.  Privilege says that some can take without giving; Liberty says that some will give at the risk of no return.  Privilege gives security to few; Liberty promises the chance for security, but the chance of privation, to all.  Only in a land without Liberty can Privilege truly flurish.  That is why its existence here is so much harder to detect than in despotic countries.  Here it must hide.  It must take less for itself, because, at root, we still believe in Liberty and Justice.  We believe that what one man has, another should have a legitimate chance at obtaining.  In those countries, the people believe- or are said to believe- that what they have is only due to the beneficence of their government, and that those in Government should have more so they can take better care of The People.  Privilege does not have to hide: it comes out openly and brazenly.  It masks itself as Nationalistic Pride, and snears at those who would question it.

The quote: "Give me Liberty or give me death," is not a call to freedom.  The Colonists were largely free.  It was a cry against privilege.  It was a cry against a consuming class who produced nothing of value.  It was a cry against Tyranny.