Posted on 02/14/2005 9:43:53 AM PST by jmc813
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a national ID bill last week that masqueraded as “immigration reform.” The bill does nothing to address immigration policy, however, nor does it propose deporting a single illegal alien already in our country. It does nothing to address the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico, which is the fundamental problem. In reality, the bill is a Trojan horse. It pretends to offer desperately needed border control in order to con a credulous Congress into sacrificing more of our constitutionally protected liberty.
Supporters claim the national ID scheme is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens. The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted. They will not be able to fly or to take a train. In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist. It is absurd to call this voluntary, and the proponents of the national ID know that every state will have no choice but to comply. Federal legislation that nationalizes standards for drivers’ licenses and birth certificates creates a national ID system pure and simple.
It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. Such domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free republics.
This bill establishes a huge, centrally-coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, Social Security number, and physical and possibly other characteristics. The bill even provides for this sensitive information of American citizens to be shared with Canada and Mexico! Imagine a corrupt Mexican official selling thousands of identity files, including Social Security numbers, to criminals!
This legislation gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand required information on drivers’ licenses, potentially including such biometric information as retina scans, finger prints, DNA information, and even Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) radio tracking technology. Including such technology as RFID means the federal government, as well as the governments of Canada and Mexico, could know where American citizens are at all times.
What will this mean for us? When this new program is implemented, every time we are required to show our drivers’ license we will, in fact, be showing a national identification card. We will be handing over a card that includes our personal and likely biometric information, information which is connected to a national and international database. This will further degrade our precious privacy, which is the hallmark of a civilized society. As Ayn Rand said, the “Savage’s whole existence is public.”
A national ID card will have the same effect as gun control laws: criminals will ignore it, while law abiding people lose freedom. A national ID card offers us nothing more than a false sense of security, while moving us ever closer to a police state. The national ID proposal should die a well-deserved death in the Senate, and it should be denounced as authoritarian and anti-American.
Regardless of what one might think of the rest of the bill, this alone should be enough to oppose it in my opinion.
As much as we dont like it, it is GOING to happen. computers run everything, and computers need a unique identifier for their database tables.
Just like your phone book- it is sorted alphabetically by name, but the PHONE NUMBER is unique- no matter how many 'Jim Smith's there are each has his own number.
This is no different.
And yes I am fully aware of the 'mark of the beast'
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a national ID bill last week that masqueraded as “immigration reform.” The bill does nothing to address immigration policy, however, nor does it propose deporting a single illegal alien already in our country. It does nothing to address the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico, which is the fundamental problem. In reality, the bill is a Trojan horse. It pretends to offer desperately needed border control in order to con a credulous Congress into sacrificing more of our constitutionally protected liberty.
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This is a sham. Just like the impotence and silence we receive from our government on REAL IMMIGRATION FIXES. Nothing. I took exception with someone the other day that posted "our government is our worst enemy"...maybe I should not have been so hasty.
"our government is our worst enemy".
Whoever that was, I agree with them completely.
In total agreeance.
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan
The difference here is that one man (Reagan) is / was sane and the other is frequently off his required medications. Ron Paul is such a loon that even when he appears to be coherent and make some modicum of sense he remains a complete & total kook.
What is it exactly, that you find insane about this article?
You're conservative, yet only now beginning to wonder? ;-)
"You have zero privacy anyway," "Get over it." - Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems
Bushbots and party-line Republicans seem to very much dislike Ron Paul (a Libertarian).
ping!
You got it!
That said, Paul is either insane or spinning like a top.
The "national ID card" is not a national ID card, and calling it that is every bit as disingenuous as Kate Michelman caling pro-lifers an "anti-choice extremists." The bill would set forth standards for state IDs so that forgery would be easier to detect. Saying this ammounts to "papers, please" (as Paul did on the floor of the House recently) is as silly as objecting to the Uniform Commercial Code because it is a "national business law system."
If he wants to make sure there's no biometric data on them, that's fine, though it seems pretty silly to me to believe that an ID that's harder to fake will somehow ruin privacy. But let's not pretend that making it harder to fake IDs is going to make us less safe, and let's sure not kill a bill cutting off licenses for illegals because someday someone might put a retina scan on a license.
Let's also remember that this is the same Ron Paul who believes the answer to judicial activism is to gut the judicial branch to the point that it can't protect any rights, either. Just because someone's anti-government doesn't mean they're thinking straight, it just means they've grasped the obvious in their political thought.
The writer of this article is unimportant if the facts are truly facts! From what I have read elsewhere, this Bill is nothing more than a National I.D. for Americans.
I don't know what the "exact" Bill says; but that is what FR is all about. So, are the stated facts in the article true??
Anyone know who sponsored this bill. If Ron Paul's description is accurate, this is pretty scary stuff.
Have you read his "We The People" Act? In Ron Paul's world, the way to cure federal judicial activism is to take the federal judiciary and make it unable to rule on any social/civil rights issue. Well, the problem with that is that the same court system that tried to screw with the Pledge of Allegiance is also the same system that guarantees the Boy Scouts their freedom of association. Libertarianism is just like anything else, it can be silly if it has no moderation, and "solving" an assault on rights by taking away protection of those rights is a prime example.
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