When I was young there used to be periodic calls for a National Identity Card.
The concept was that the card would show you were a US citizen, be your social security card, proof of ID, etc.
Everything in one package.
President Clinton proposed national IDs during his administration as part of his administration's health care plan. Some people on the right and left proposed it as a way to combat illegal immigration.
Frankly, it'd make a lot of sense, or it did, in context. The card could be general proof of your identity, be your SSN card, your medicare card, your draft card, etc.
It was always opposed by the far right. Indeed, opposed fanatically. Ronald Reagan joked that it would be "the mark of the beast", but that was a joke that tapped into the Evangelical element of his base. A halfway joke, basically, pitched at people who were already afraid that the Antichrist was soon to appear.
But the left opposed it too, and adamantly.
I note this for the current irony. The Trump Administration is boosting the SAVE Act as a means of trying to keep the "wrong" people from voting.
We all know who those people are. . . . wink, wink.
And that's because they know that in the fall they're going to lose.
But ironically, they're basically proposing that millions of adults do, and millions won't be able to do, what would have been done decades ago, if they hadn't run around preventing it.
Of course, that wouldn't have required a national seizure of the elections, but that isn't required now, either.
It's funny, we used to think that the state demanding your papers was fascist.
Now, Chuck Gray just gleefully turns voter roles over to the Federal Government. . . . which doesn't mean that the state demanding paper is not, in fact, fascist.
Ihre Papiere, bitte.
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