On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:58 AM, comex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The first, too, is irrelevant to this case; the crux of the issue is > whether privilege, in ordinary-language meaning, is MAY or CAN. How > about both? > > Googling 'rights and privileges', one of the websites that comes up > contrasts the right of life or liberty with the privilege of driving a > car. Assume that a teenager does not have the privilege of driving > his car, and MAY NOT and CANNOT do it (he doesn't have access to the > keys, for example). If he gained the ability to do it (found the > keys), but was still forbidden to do it, we wouldn't say that he had > gained the privilege of driving his car; nor would we in the more > bizarre situation that he became allowed to do it but remained unable > to. We would only say that he has the privilege of driving his car if > he MAY and CAN do so.
Yeah, the example I had in mind to bring up if pressed was the privilege of voting. If a person lacks this privilege (e.g. a resident alien or a convicted felon), then to borrow Agoran terminology, e MAY NOT and CANNOT vote; if e attempts to vote anyway, the fraudulent ballot would be invalidated if discovered. Voting in Agora, where an ineligible voter clearly CANNOT vote, works the same way. -root
