National ID Red Alert!

by Steven Yates
by Steven Yates

The year 2005 is now less than two weeks away. It might be the year what is left of Constitutional government in America faces its greatest test yet.

The specific day most likely to live in infamy in 2004 was December 7. That was the day our ex-Trotskyite controlled Congress passed the so-called National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 (S.2845) – also called the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 – another of those multi-thousand page tomes all but unread by the vast majority of those who signed it. The Intelligence Reform bill was put together ostensibly in response to recommendations by the 9/11 Commission. Its official title as introduced: "A bill to reform the intelligence community and the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, and for other purposes." Inquiring minds want to know: what other purposes? One thing we can be sure of: this horrid bill contains things those in power have wanted for years, the things Claire Wolfe once called "land mine legislation," some of which were beaten back by public outrage in the pre-9/11 world.

A de facto national ID card, for example.

That’s right. The National Intelligence Reform Act orders the Department of Homeland Security to begin issuing "uniformity regulations" requiring that all driver’s licenses and birth certificates meet certain federalized standards, along with biometrics for "security" purposes. The provisions can be found in subsections 7212 and 7211 of the bill respectively. States will be ordered to include personal information about every individual, and this information will be used to build a huge federal database – giving unelected federal bureaucrats access to your information. In other words, your privacy – already severely eroded by the federal behemoth – will become a thing of the past in 2005. Control over the issuing of social security numbers (subsection 7213) will also be federalized. Also, the bill directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish separate standards for national ID used to board airplanes (subsection 7220). The ramifications here go well beyond the transformation of airports into fortresses we have seen since 9/11. It is just possible that as a result of this legislation, the feds will see themselves as having a green light to begin setting up road block check points. Below we will encounter reason to believe an "internal passport" to travel freely in this country is in the works. This could be one of those unstated "other purposes." If this runaway train is not stopped, be prepared to have to "show your papers," just like the cannon fodder that populated the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Among other "accomplishments" of this noxious piece of legislation: creating a national director of intelligence who would oversee all 15 federal intelligence agencies, including three housed in the Defense Department (Title I, Subtitle A). The current rule of thumb in our political ruling class: when in doubt, centralize. Consolidate power.

The only sensible measures in the bill were the ones that were dropped. These were measures that blocked states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and limited appeals for illegal immigrants facing deportation. I have long believed that our porous borders are a recipe for disaster on multiple fronts. Not only is the cheap labor offered via illegal immigration one of the factors slowly destroying what is left of America’s middle class, but there can be little doubt that Middle Easterners who may mean Americans harm can cross over our Mexican border as easily as any Mexican. I will wager money that if another terrorist attack occurs on American soil, we will be able to trace the perpetrators’ movements back to our Southern border. The basis for questioning the sincerity of our political class in wanting to protect the American public from terrorism is actually quite solid.

The House passed this awful bill by a vote of 336-75. The Senate passed it by a vote of 89-2. There is almost no doubt that President Bush will sign it. On December 7, Bush stated, "I am pleased the measure also contains many critical law enforcement tools that I have called for that will help make America more secure. I look forward to signing this landmark piece of legislation into law."

We know that Ron Paul (R-Tx) voted against it. Congressman Paul had warned that same day, "Those who are willing to allow the government to establish a Soviet-style internal passport system because they think it will make us safer are terribly mistaken. Subjecting every citizen to surveillance and screening points actually will make us less safe, not in the least because it will divert resources away from tracking an apprehending terrorists and deploy them against innocent Americans! Every conservative who believes in constitutional restraints on government should reject the authoritarian national ID card and the nonsensical intelligence bill itself."

It is becoming clear, however, that putting a Soviet-style system in place has long been one of the goals of those who want unlimited power over U.S. citizens. The "war on terror" is looking more and more every day like a ruse – an instrument for instilling fear and convincing the gullible that they are "unsafe" in the absence of massive federal monitoring over every aspect of their lives. We are indeed approaching the kind of cradle-to-grave controls that existed over the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

To those of us who are long time observers of the march toward world government, none of this is surprising. Almost exactly 50 years ago, reports G. Edward Griffin, an unusual meeting took place between one Roland Gaither, then President of the enormously wealthy Ford Foundation, and a Mr. Norman Dodd, then chief investigator for the Congressional Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations. Mr. Gaither asks Mr. Dodd, "Would you be interested in knowing what we do here at the Ford Foundation?" Mr. Dodd replies, "Yes! That’s exactly why I am here. I would be very interested, sir." Mr. Gaither tells him, "Mr. Dodd, we operate in response to directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union." When he recovers from his shock, Mr. Dodd asks whether Mr. Gaither believes he doesn’t have an obligation to disclose this aim of one of the wealthiest tax-exempt foundations in the country to the American people. Mr. Gaither replies, "We would never dream of doing such a thing."

And some say there are no "conspiracies."

Of course, the original Soviet Union is no more. But Sovietization is very much alive as an unofficial policy of the current Anglo-American power structure, and this is no mystery when one considers the ex-Trotskyites (otherwise known as neocons) now in control of the Republican Party. Doubtless they see Bush’s reelection as a green light to move ahead at full speed. Perhaps we might find a clue in the Bush Administration’s hiring of two ex-KGB chiefs, General Yevgeni Primakov and Alexander Karpov, to work in the now infamous Office of Information Awareness (DARPA) to help design the equivalent of an internal passport for Americans. These two are now Homeland Security consultants.

Sovietization has to do with the total subjugation of a population to police state conditions, destroying whatever indigenous cultures or revered bodies of ideas encountered along the way. It has to do with herding people into collectives, treating them as potential enemies, and controlling them psychologically by encouraging groupthink and invoking fears of various sorts – in the present case, of terrorism. The Soviet mindset expects absolute obedience and, when empowered, enforces it. (Think here of what has actually happened to the small handful of people who refused to be treated like criminals by federal airport nazis.)

The body of ideas most at stake is the one holding that the federal government answers to the Constitution, which limits its powers. There is nothing in the Constitution authorizing the federal government to mandate national identification of any sort from any federal agency, much less to federalize airport security or plan and issue internal passports to law-abiding citizens. For that matter, the majority of federal agencies extending their reach into our lives are unconstitutional.

The Sovietization of America would be a key step toward the creation of global authority. It would apply what Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt once called the "Four-Prong Devil’s Fork": (1) Gradualism, originally conceived in the late 1800s by the Fabian Socialists, leading to instituting changes over such long periods of time that the masses of people do not recognize what is happening; (2) semantic deception, using traditional-sounding labels as a means of sugar-coating and deception; (3) using an endless supply of taxpayer dollars; and (4) applying Hegelian dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis: the deliberate creation of a problem resulting in a panicked reaction, leading the masses to accept a predetermined solution it would never have accepted before. The entire "war on terrorism" is taking on a character very much like this. (I sometimes tell people that when the federal government declares "war" on anything, your best bet is to put your hands over your head and run for cover. All one need do is look at the "wars" on poverty and drugs, and wonder why the "war" on terrorism will be any different.)

So in sum, as 2005 looms, we have reason to worry! Regarding national ID, the you-know-what is about to hit the fan. Ladies and gentlemen, now is the time to act. Avoidance of having unconstitutional national identification shoved down our throats by an unconstitutional Department of Homeland Security depends on how many law-abiding citizens contact their representatives and senators in Rome on the Potomac and protest a "war on terrorism" being waged under the assumption that they are potentially the enemy. It depends on how many State governors, senators and representatives remember that the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has never been officially repealed. It may depend on whether U.S. citizens are willing to stand up and declare their refusal to cooperate – to engage in civil disobedience, if it comes to that, as author Devvy Kidd has done in her just-published call to arms.

This means protesting something the globalists want badly. There is no guarantee, moreover, that a Constitutionalist with a "dream team" of libertarian attorneys would win a court fight over this thing. Supreme Court rulings have upheld federal authorities’ declarations of a right to demand identification from any American at any time for any reason as not being violations of their Constitutional rights. Legal precedent is no longer on the side of limitations on federal power. Finally, much of corporate America – especially banks, credit unions and credit card companies – would likely applaud a national ID system as the best available solution to the problems posed by identity theft and other forms of fraud. An important organization of software companies has endorsed the intelligence reform bill. Entire industries all of us are compelled to interact with in a technologically advanced society may well adopt a uniform policy of requiring federalized ID as a condition of doing business with them.

At the same time, there is a growing number of people who have had it with all the centralization, consolidation, etc. A freedom-loving people will not long tolerate the growth of powers they have no legal defenses against. So are we freedom-loving, or do we just want security? If we choose the latter, I predict along with Ben Franklin that we shall have neither. If you want freedom, the time has come to say so. Not to me, in emails, but to those in power in Rome on the Potomac! The bill may have been signed, but it is not too late to give the powers that be some serious second thoughts. Here is a link to the House of Representatives with telephone contact information (recommended over both email and snail-mail); here is one to the Senate. Go for it!

The National Intelligence Reform Act is not specific in what it is requiring Homeland Security to do. So we do have some wiggle room, and it is at least conceivable that a massive outcry might yet thwart our headlong rush into Sovietization. This places a large onus on the American public – this means you! Unless you want your children to look back on 2005 as the year the "old America" simply ceased to exist.

December 18, 2004

Steven Yates [send him mail] has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994) and the forthcoming Worldviews: Christian Theism versus Modern Materialism and In Defense of Logic. He directs the Worldviews Project and has joined Stratia Corporation as a part-time consultant. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

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