Federal Judge rules "No fundamental right to literacy"

[Angrboda]

I can't say that I disagree with the ruling.  Educational opportunity might be a right, seeing that it is a matter of law.  However, we can't elevate everything to the level of a right just because it's desirable.

Right is nothing more than desirability sanctified.

In this case, to admit something is desirable but to deny that it is a right is clearly a but a bit of rhetorical gymnastic to excuse the denying to some people, and not solely out of concern for practicality, of what is extremely desirable so as to enable others to gain more of what is even more of what is even further from a right.

I don't agree with your theory of rights. In some sense, rights are simply privilege, sanctified. However, we don't consider all privilege worthy of such elevation, so there is more to something being a right than mere desirability. Not having considered the question at any length, I'm unsure what that something is and simply note that we do distinguish between things that are rights and ordinary desirables, and thus your argument encompasses an incomplete and over-simplified conception of rights. So no, I wouldn't agree that the distinction is merely one of mental gymnastics, or at least, is not apparently so. Given our intuitive distinction of the nature of rights, unless you have some explicit condemnation of the reasoning employed, I don't buy your argument. It's merely a hand wave to attempt to dismiss a result you don't like.