"Your Papers, Please"

"New York - The federal government's efforts to create a standardized, secure driver's license that would also serve as a national ID card have hit some significant stumbling blocks." Soon you'll have a national ID card if certain legislators in the federal government have their way. The trouble with such a thing is that if you don't have one, after it is required, you cannot do business, anywhere in the country. The government can make you an "unperson" at will, and ruin your life, on the whim of some bureaucrat somewhere, whose name and location you usually can't even find out. Yes, there is the problem of identity theft. But that will ALWAYS be a problem as long as crooks are as good as they are at falsifying documents. It doesn't matter how sophisticated such cards are, the bad guys often make it to the streets with any new "wrinkle" even before the government can get it out. In any case, we already HAVE A "national ID card." It's called the Social Security card, which every American is REQUIRED to have, in order to pay his taxes or work -- and non-payment of taxes can get you in big trouble. It was SUPPOSED to NEVER be used for general identification. The government even promised faithfully that it would not. They even printed, right on the card, "not to be used for identification." Unfortunately (or intentionally, maybe?) they didn't make a LAW to enforce it. Then about 35 years later, they started "encouraging" private business to use it for identification. That was about the same time they QUIETLY, with "no fanfare," removed the "no identification" notice from the Social Security card. I go by what people DO, not what they SAY. And those actions, at the same time, tell me they had planned to use the SS card for national ID when they first imposed that pyramid scheme called Social Security on us back in the thirties, the same year they created the Federal Reserve System. You don't think the two are connected? C'mawn! Don't be naïve. (Christian Science Monitor, 11/5/07)