Orwellian Real ID tyranny
April 6, 2008 – 10:47 pm by JohnAfter Anthony Gregory’s announcements on the LRC blag and Mises blag introducing the Independent Institute’s new blag, The Beacon, I realized that my recent lament that Gregory has only recently resumed regular blagging was misinformed; he has apparently been writing for that blag since October and was, in fact, its first poster. (Maybe they wanted to give themselves a few months to establish a strong base of blag posts before announcing it to the libertarian blagging world.)
Choosing your favorite Anthony Gregory writing is like choosing your most hated federal pork-barrel expense; there’s so much to choose from! His recent post on California’s (weak) opposition to the Imperial Federal Government’s Real ID fascism struck me quite hard. Maybe it was the subject matter and not his commentary on the situation that struck me. The realization that had such an impact on me was: This is really going to happen. We are really going to have a national ID card in the United States, not 250 years after the country was founded on supposedly libertarian principles. The stupid, spineless liberal wing of the Republocrat party quickly caved in and went along with the evil, militant, fascist wing of the Republocrats in the House and Senate, and passed it with hardly any debate. The only obstacle that remains is to coerce every state to comply with it without causing too much of a fuss or raising too much publicity about it. See the House vote on the bill here; the Senate vote was 100-0, so you know both of your senators are State-worshiping, fascist megalomaniacs who want to control your behavior, movement, and transactions to almost no end.
Maybe my less libertarian friends would argue that the passing of the Real ID act might give some bad apples in the central government the potential to try to acquire more power over our personal lives, and maybe sometime in the future, if we elect too many Republocrats of this or that leaning, then there will be a danger of civil liberties erosions. That mindset is precisely why there is so much government and so little freedom in the world today.
It is happening here. Take a look at that House vote on H.R. 1268. Did your congresshumans (past and present) vote for that bill? How about ones you generally support? Whom you haven’t spoken out against as immoral, power-grubbing State lovers?
The problem is not the Democrats or the Republicans. The problem is not the president. The problem is not the terrorists or the people fighting the terrorists or the people who oppose the terrorist-fighters. The problem is a State that is above and outside of the law and the society it governs.
Here are some excerpts from Anthony Gregory’s blag post:
The Real ID sailed through Congress three years ago without much debate at all, and has largely been defended on two grounds: As an anti-terror measure and as an anti-illegal alien measure. It is difficult to see, however, how state DMVs, if their licensing is so incompetent, will be made more precise and exacting once the DHS adds another layer of bureaucracy to the process. And while some politicians have discussed a national ID card as something the aliens would be forced to carry, this is absurd on its face. What kind of ID is only compelled upon the outsiders? Would NOT having an ID then be proof of being legal??
[...]
For the long run, it is to be hoped that more states stand up to this, continuing to expose the national government’s weakness and contradictions. Perhaps rebelling state governments are our most realistic hope of avoiding America’s final descent toward a future of being just one more police state where “Papers, Please,” is as common a phrase as “Hello.”
Ask yourself how much you are to blame for the existence of proto-Orwellian laws like the Real ID Act and agencies like the Homeland Security department. What could you have done to prevent or delay the implementation of such immoral State functions? Or at least raise awareness of their complete immorality amongst your peers? Increase the amount of opposition that your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues voiced and was echoed by the media? Or do you support such controlling and oppressive measures? What should be done, then, with the people who don’t? If you do oppose things like this, and you did vote for local or federal representatives who oppose it, or you have talked about it with your co-workers, classmates, friends, and family, or you have written a letter do the editor of a newspaper, how does its easy passage into law and imminent implementation make you feel? If you ask yourself, “What (more) could I have done to prevent or delay this?” and your answer is, “Well, nothing more than I did do, really,” then what do you think about your complete lack of political efficacy?
In the House it passed 368-58 and in the Senate it passed 100-0. That is an approval rating of 89% amongst our Imperial elected criminals. Without looking up any statistics, I can assure you its approval rate amongst the American people is not 89%. And yet we can do nothing about it. We will be subjected to it regardless of our protests and resistance. (I personally wouldn’t care if I were the only human being who opposed this; it would still be completely immoral for the rest of you Statolatrists to force this or any other behavior-control law on me, as I want nothing to do with a monopolistic State that rules by coercion and extortion.)
Maybe I have a better question for you: What will it take for you to admit that the system, and not the collection of good-hearted and well-meaning (we are assured) individuals who run the system, is the problem? Just an example or two is all I ask. How much farther would it have to go before you repudiate the whole representative [sic] republic idea and admit that people can take care of themselves cooperatively and voluntarily better than disinterested and unaccountable agents of the State can?
I would add one more thought to this, or rather just quote George Getz, former Libertarian Party communications director, referring to the Department of Defense’s Total Information Awareness System: “The government of a free country shouldn’t want surveillance powers like these. And the fact that the government wants them is proof that it shouldn’t have them.”