It was not always the case that in order to travel around the world, Americans had to be confronted by a government agent doing a Nazi SS imitation of “Your papers, please.” I speak of course of the passport requirement.
I just renewed my passport so that I can escape the American police state now and then. The new feature on the American passport is quotations from various government employees, including George Washington, Daniel Webster, Lincoln, JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and a deceased government astronaut from Hawaii. One crum is tossed to civil society: the one non-government employee quoted is the late nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century black educator Anna Julia Cooper.
8:36 am on January 30, 2015
