National ID Cards: The New Bureau Of Engraving
By John Longenecker (04/12/06)
America is the great melting pot not entirely because people want to come here, but because people are welcome here. Immigration strengthens our nation because, when more and more assimilate, we have a bigger and better America. ..if they assimilate. On that ground, I would vote for borders that welcome friendly emigres. Done.
But threats to our safety and sovereignty may not come exclusively from incoming persons, but perhaps persons already here. Changes in persuading prison populations, college campuses, you get the idea. The claim of the officials is that they can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. Why is that? Is there a certain advantage in this for them?
America, as wonderful as she is, is still a work in progress, and in her direction, she can be led and misled on turning issues. National ID Cards and RFID Chips are two examples of such opportunities to mislead the People, ultimately to become the very thing emigres wish to flee: government over-reach.
Though the situation seems to turn on issues of privacy, it’s more along the lines of personal sovereignty, or the right to opt-out and the idea of saying No simply being enough in this country. Otherwise, your sovereignty is dead.
Well, one way to find out is to object to the National ID Card and see what happens. The RFID Industry is already pushing its chips down our throats even though most persons say they do not fully understand what they are and others who do are refusing them. Part of the strategery is the all-too-familiar tactic of stigmatizing those who object. [Check out this Blog as one example: http://loftwares.blogspot.com/2006/03/still-crazy-after-all-these-years.html]
National ID cards seem to be consistent with adverse social conditions I have long suspected to be the thought-product of powerful, official and non-official misguided tinkerers, amounting to spoiled brats who can get anything they want. For them, it is a game and to Hell with the country. In this, their stubbornness affects our realities and way of life.
The evidence is their unwillingness to hear the complaint of the People which ordinarily should break through that insulation to reach that intoxicated thinking, but it does not. Examples of such conditions have been ongoing violent crime, essentially unsecured borders and other conditions of their device, only to introduce their pre-formulated solutions rammed down our throats in spite of all our objections.
This is governance? There’s another word for it, and it’s not Slavery or Tyranny: it’s Dependency, an immense values shift from self-reliance to reliance on agencies.
National ID Cards is not a solution to something -- it is an investment strategy.
[Think of those printers that cost so little, but the cartridges cost so much and you have the idea of allowing crime and open borders to fester prior to introducing National ID Cards, the real product they sell.]
In this pre-formulated solution to social engineering "mistakes", our sovereignty stands in the way of looting the United States.
How, exactly? (..Because America is not a Parts & Service Business, I mean. America, herself, is not a commodity to trade.)
When our protest – exercising our sovereignty in objecting to something – stops stupid policies, policies some reeallly want to institute, it’s necessary then to their way of thinking to dissolve that resistance or push it aside. Many of those policies permit financial gains for people, right? [Think expensive ink cartridges.] Well, allowing conditions to turn rotten in America means the need for radical solutions, many of which cost us not only in revenues, but also in our privacy and other freedoms, because our freedoms mean we’re in charge. Officials want to be in charge, even though it goes against every value in America.
Ten years ago, our objection might have been enough. Today, it’s not.
The National ID Card, as it is proposed both openly and in stealth proposals (see H.R. 418 appearing to be a national security measure and which is opposed vociferously by Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX), will tie activities, liberties and overall freedoms of movement we take for granted – such as purchasing train tickets, food, fuel or you name it – to worldwide databases that will bind vendors, utilities, transporters and others to denying services to those who cannot furnish the proper, single identification. That would include both a Real ID Card and the RFID Chip embedded within it.
[The irony is that it will compel or punish vendors for their non-adherence, but try this with employers of illegals and officials scream like Hell!]
Translation: cooperation, or else. You cooperate or you can’t travel, you can’t buy food or other products until they know who you are. The idea is that you have to be identified or you’re suspect under present conditions.
Translation of translation: Dependency on agencies. The trick is in pointing to deteriorating social conditions and make National ID Cards seem a reasonable solution, when, in fact, respect for sovereignty in the ways we need it is by far the more reasonable answer.
The National ID Card sweeps up the honest in nearly any legitimate business or personal leisure contact with the posed effort to identify and perhaps even capture the hostile terrorist, as it will dissolve states’ rights in favor of a single, cold-blooded central authority; it can criminalize those who would rather go on with their innocent lives, and it simply moves us along without our consent. Even in the case of ultimately releasing an innocent person, the cost to them enriches professionals along the way, from attorneys to family counselors, to statistical asset justification for even more law enforcement to unemployment and possible disaster as a foreseeable scenario.
This is now made possible by the restriction of what you cannot innocently do any longer without approval, that Card and that Chip on it. Your innocent activities can easily be misinterpreted. And worse, they can second-guess your next move and make a move to stop you. [As I’ve said, Privacy is a safeguard against mistake, abuse and retaliation, and the incoming RFID Chips will open a file on you like never before, not only following who you are and what you do, but what you should be and what you can’t do anymore since they found out what you do.]
Such intrusion is dangerous for all but the elite, in that everyday business actions of the powerless can be so easily misinterpreted and subjected to the will of demonization, that tool of coercive, anti-liberty types. This is made possible by taking issue with your private actions. This is made possible by monitoring them. Monitoring you is made possible by a values shift of self-reliance to reliance on agencies for protection.
Whatever you do, it will be open to judgment of others on the lookout for suspicious actions, and they’re much more likely than not to misunderstand the innocence of what you do. This is precisely how and where Privacy is the Safeguard against mistake, abuse and retaliation - and why it must be dissolved.
The unreasonableness of the National ID Card and RFID Chip on it is this: Officials seem to have no powers of discernment in telling the good guy from the bad guy, so they have to monitor everyone and see -- for your protection.
The pattern is to open the borders (to create conditions that can be protrayed as a thret) and then claim they cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys without this solution, intrusive monitoring in order to protect you (from the situation they created!!) .
See the connection? To a lot of people, this is nothing new. Conspiracy? No: Investment strategy. Business.
Engraving numbers on people – which I saw frequently in the Fairfax District as a Los Angeles Paramedic – is repeating itself as an early warning of dependency under threat of force coming. Now we’re all about to be engraved. Electronically, but engraved just the same.
Webster said of officials, “They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” Good Lord, was he ever right!
What we feared could never happen here is beginning — electronically, they’re coming for us.
And that’s not good for the country.
The answer is to stop the values shift away from personal responsibility and to remember our uniquely American values: that whatever laws we have to live with today can be changed to new America-friendly No National ID Cards law in short order.
By us.
And that would be good for the country.
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