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historical lesson of wartime is that government grabs new powers
that it could never secure during times of peace. War has been an
engine of government growth and invasiveness because the state very
rarely gives back the freedoms it has usurped during the time of
crisis. In fact, in his famous and brilliant book Crisis
and Leviathan, historian Robert Higgs provides dozens of
examples of how government has nearly doubled in size after every
major war.
The new war
on terrorism is especially frightening in this regard. Obviously,
in the wake of the heinous events of September 11th, everyone wants
the government to take extra prudent security measures to prevent
the recurrence of these murderous acts. But almost every new security
step that the government has taken in the last several weeks will
do little to avoid terrorism, but will do a lot to place new burdens
on the rest of us. The examples are mounting up: ending curbside
check in at airports, not allowing e-ticket holders to go straight
to the airport gate, requiring motorists to wait in lines for hours
to get into Manhattan, creating five and six hour waits at the border
for truckers to bring their cargo into the country, shutting down
Reagan National Airport (which will probably be opening by week's
end).
One really
bad idea that scares me is the rush to institute a national ID card.
The idea is to require every American to carry a secure identification
card that would include a photograph and some biometric identifier,
such as a fingerprint. These kinds of internal passports were the
hallmark of totalitarian nations and other police states. Almost
every national ID card proposal would include a national computer
database that would or could contain all sorts of information about
you and me. Police, employers, school officials, etc. would phone
into this database to verify our citizenship and records. I have
suggested that the government use the easy to remember number: 1-800-BIG-BROTHER.
With a small
microchip on the card, the government could storehouse every conceivable
piece of data about our private lives on the card: extensive health
and education records, our job histories, our past residences, information
about whether we own a gun and how many, perhaps income and IRS
data, etc. It is also interesting that every time a big government
liberal suggests some new expansive governmental power, it is often
linked to setting up a national ID card. For example, gun-control
fanatics have always lusted after the idea of a national registry
of gun ownership in America — which would, of course, facilitate
rounding up the guns if the government ever tried to disarm citizens.
Conservatives
should never forget that the last major politician who called for
national identifier card was none other than Hillary Clinton when
she wanted to nationalize the health-care system in America. If
we already had a national ID card to "fight terrorism,"
this would only make Hillary's socialistic dream all the more achievable.
We have seen
time and again throughout history that when the government gathers
information about us, it often uses that data for illegal and unconstitutional
purposes. The IRS just a few years ago admitted, for example, that
the "confidential" IRS records of thousands of Americans
were invaded by snooping IRS agents. The government used supposedly
confidential Census Bureau information to track down Japanese Americans
during the internment during World War II.
I confess here
a strong libertarian bias. Call me a natural skeptic, but I refuse
to believe that an ID card system would only be used by government
officials for legitimate purposes. The idea of a national id card
system with another Janet Reno in the Justice Department is frankly
very frightening. My belief is that the less the government knows
about me the better. And I'm no terrorist; nor am I an illegal immigrant.
Here's the
clinching argument against the id-card scheme: It won't work. The
objective of the ID card is to keep out terrorists and to reduce
illegal immigration. But terrorists can come to the United States
in any one of dozens of ways legally. They can come as tourists,
students, legal immigrants, diplomats, and on and on. A national
ID card scheme would have done nothing to deter the September 11
calamity. These terrorists were here in the country legally. For
those foreigners who do enter illegally, falsified documents are
available quickly and at a low cost. Any design of a card the government
can come up with, counterfeiters can easily copy. You can obtain
half decent forgeries of drivers licenses and birth certificates
for less than $200 at the border in California. A more secure system
might double that price, which could potentially deter some poor
Mexican agriculture workers from trekking across the border illegally,
but a $500 "fee" to obtain false paperwork would hardly
be a deterrent against well financed militant terrorists who plan
multi-billion dollar operations.
We can defeat
terrorism — by defunding the murderers and by systematically
tracking their operations down. We don't have to forfeit fundamental
freedoms and civil liberties to the agents of government. After
all, we love America because it is the freest land in the world.
It is our freedoms and our wealth that make the terrorist hate us
so much, and that we have set out to protect. If we do decide, one
by one to voluntarily surrender our bundle of rights, I believe
we will have allowed the terrorists to achieve a great victory over
the American way of life.
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