It was not always so...
Yes, obtaining license is a privilege granted by a higher authority. If you ask for permission, then the permission can be either granted or denied, at the whim of the higher authority. There was a time when driving an automobile on the public roads was a right, but the people let this right slip through their fingers.
There is hardly a more blatant example of the loss of a right than the driving of an automobile.
It is explained, in the Yale Law Journal of 1931: "The law has drawn a distinction between the ordinary use of the highway for travel, and its use for purposes of private gain. A vehicle on the road for the former purpose is there as of 'right'; one using it in the latter manner has only a 'privilege' of use."
The Constitutional Law section of American Jurisprudence explains the right: "While the freedom to travel within the United States has been held to be a basic right under the Federal Constitution which is independent of a specific provision therein, the right of locomotion has also been held to be a part of the 'liberty' guaranteed by the due process clauses."
Justice Epes, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, explained the right quite clearly and frankly: "The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business is a common right which he has under his right to enjoy life and liberty, to acquire and possess property, and to pursue happiness and safety. It includes the right in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under the existing modes of travel includes the right to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or to operate an automobile thereon, for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is not a mere privilege, like the privilege of moving a house in the street, or transporting persons or property for hire along the street, which a city may permit or prohibit at will." Justice Griffith, delivering an opinion of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, declared, upon reviewing the opinion of Justice Epes of Virginia concerning this most valuable of rights: "There seems to be no dissent among the authorities on this proposition."
Americans have this propensity toward pissing away their rights for privileges granted by the State.