National ID Reconsidered
It will be hard to achieve key MAGA goals of election integrity and mass deportation of illegals without it.
Please read the accompanying article entitled Papers, Please from Tablet Magazine on the desirability of a national ID card.
We often run articles from other sources we find interesting, but we wanted to follow up with our thoughts.
Insofar as the 2024 election is concerned, two issues related to identification stand out. One is election integrity, which would be easier if we could be assured that only citizens and those who are alive are voting. We also need to know we are counting citizens relative to census calculations and the changes in congressional districts.
Secondly, the idea of mass deportation of illegals would be more straightforward with a national ID card of some sort.
Against that are the arguments for a national ID, which are that some people who are “marginalized” (perhaps drug addicts living on the street) could not get a card or the civil libertarian argument that an ID will be subject to government abuse.
We don’t buy into the former argument because many of the individuals who are “marginalized” are receiving all kinds of public benefits and indeed have, or recently had, some form of ID. In fact, one can hardly do anything today, ranging from checking into a motel room to cashing a check without displaying some form of ID.
The latter argument that a totalitarian government could use a national ID to violate the rights of its people is a more serious objection. However, as we will attempt to show, it is flawed.
Looking through my wallet, I find a picture ID for Costco, a picture ID Global Entry card, Social Security and Medicare cards, health insurance cards, a concealed weapons permit, and a driver’s license/travel card. Several of these cards required fingerprinting. I also had to submit all kinds of information, sometimes including fingerprints, for employment and various commercial licenses to buy and sell securities when I was working. In short, both public and private agencies know all about me.
True, not all these agencies talk to each other all the time, but with a bit of work, I am sure they would have no problem finding me.
I have had a driver’s ID for 60 years, and the Gestapo has not stopped me yet.
The point is that ID per se does not cause the government to turn totalitarian. It is when the government turns totalitarian that ID is abused—cause and effect or reversed from the order used by those opposed to national ID. And if you don’t have an ID, a totalitarian government will surely provide one.
Your ID can sit “idle” for a lifetime and never be of any harm to your liberties. But when the government starts to spy on us, tap our phone calls, snoop on our emails, track our money, take our license plate numbers at school board meetings, force us to take unproven and unsafe ‘vaccines’ and suppress our free speech, that is the problem. Note that all these abuses are taking place right now in the absence of a national ID.
The government could use an ID card to single out specific groups. For example, they could single out homeschoolers, parents who don’t want their kids transitioned by blue-haired school therapists, and “white nationalist” members of the armed services. Oh, that has already been done as well, even though a national ID does not exist.
ID cards could also be used to target individuals with illegal immigration status. Ah, that is kind of the point.
ID, thus, should be viewed as a tool. A wrench can be used to fix a plumbing problem or to fracture a skull. It is entirely up to the user how it is used, not a choice made by the tool. The tool does not determine the action of the user; instead, it is the user who determines the use of the tool.
We should do everything we can to defend our God-given liberties and privacy. That is the entire point of The Prickly Pear. However, there is no direct connection between the state of freedom in a given nation and the use of national ID.
What about the benefits of a national ID card?
It seems that it streamlines processing for those occasions where ID is required. We want to be sure that those claiming social benefits only go to valid citizens. Besides looting our social services, we don’t wish noncitizens to vote and determine our leaders. If we can’t distinguish the status of citizen and non-citizen, what does it mean to be a citizen? What does the “right to vote” mean when your vote can be canceled by a noncitizen voting or a person voting multiple times? Your right no longer means much at all.
Moreover, we need to be able to distinguish illegal aliens from citizens more efficiently. Right now, it is relatively easy to get fake documents.
If we really want those who have broken immigration laws to go home or go through the proper process to become citizens, we have to know the citizens from the non-citizens.
Deporting large numbers of illegals is both necessary and likely to create a degree of social trauma. One of the best ways will be to encourage self-deportation.
The best way to do that is to change the incentive structure. Lack of social benefits and difficulty finding work create an environment likely to encourage self-deportation. But how is an employer to know whether they are employing a citizen or an illegal? How does a social worker know if an applicant is a citizen that qualifies for welfare?
If there were a reliable method for determining whether someone is a citizen or a green card holder with a secure form of ID, it would be easier to sue employers for violating immigration laws and less costly for businesses to comply. It would also mean less welfare fraud.
Yes, it is true that a government could use a national ID to deprive us of our liberties. But it is also true that the government has been abusing our liberties without a national ID.
Incidentally, this is not just an issue for our time. Recall that many Japanese Americans confirmed as citizens were forcibly incarcerated in camps during World War II. Was that caused by having a national ID? It had nothing to do with it. The Roosevelt Administration and Governor Earl Warren did it.
The lack of ID or its existence is not the qualifying factor in determining whether liberty will be preserved.
And it is also axiomatic that it is easier to deny benefits to illegals if you can identify them.
As the great economist Thomas Sowell pointed out, there often are no solutions to complex problems, only trade-offs. Today, we must trade off whether a national ID would be the “cause” of our national decline or simply an administrative manifestation of that decline. That must be weighed against creating a better system to distinguish citizens from illegal aliens and more secure election outcomes.
It will be hard to maintain our liberty when the government is allowed to break the law, exploit illegals for its purposes, and bankrupt our social services as a socialist gesture to the third world.
Likewise, it will be hard to maintain liberty when the government wants to import what it believes will be faithful supporters to replace us, the actual citizens – perhaps calling this violation of American citizenry part of a ‘Great Reset’.
Therefore, a national ID could be an essential step towards defending our liberty and nationhood.
Since we have demonstrated that our liberty has been harmed without a national ID, we would rather fight for freedom at all levels and on all fronts and have a rational ID system that helps preserve the country’s sovereignty and borders, protects the solvency of our social services, and ensures the integrity of the electoral processes.
What do you think is the proper trade-off?
