

Why All Americans Should Carry ID Papers - georgecmu
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237950

======
teodesian
I find all of this fuss quite humorous; the federal government has had
basically the same law as Arizona on the books for nearly thirty years now.
However, being the feds, they arbitrarily enforce laws as it suits them
(mainly because they have so many criminal laws now that there is no way they
could consistently enforce them all -- even if they press-ganged a tenth of
the population into the US marshalls).

The issue here is that Arizona is deciding to enforce such an unjust law. Why
is it unjust? Because it is a "positive" offense (I.E. it violates no one's
natural rights) -- an offense that would not exist without government.

Traditionally, systems based on English common law restricted the punishment
of "positive" offenses to fines (a tradition sadly abandoned by most Anglo
nations now), regardless of whether said person was a "citizen" or not.

To be fair, the old English common law didn't have (or need) the concept of
"citizenship" in the first place. Citizenship generally only enters into a
society when there is special privilege associated (I.E. a leg-up on the rest
of society) -- which is the main reason people are upset about "illegals", as
they are partaking of pillage (aka entitlements) the citizens thought reserved
unto themselves.

So what is the better alternative? Simplify the legal code, such that
citizenship is irrelevant? Or have an even more complex system that requires
such brutal enforcement to be held together? Or is it the one world
government?

I would posit that the last two choices are inappropriate -- brutal
enforcement and complex laws destroy trust in a society, while a one-world
government cannot hope to meaningfully represent the diverse aims of man; it
would be a sub-optimal outcome at best, and inescapable tyranny at worst.

However, no one will accept simplifying laws such that they are not an affront
to justice and liberty, as those who have secured themselves entitlements and
other powers will not release them without violence.

So, sorry guys. There's no solution to this problem that won't cause worse
trouble down the line. To be fair, it's not like we have a choice in the
matter anyways -- the only votes we ever had (or can ever have) is our
money...and we gave away that control in 1913.

------
natmaster
"As Frank Rich pointed out in a recent New York Times column, of the 35
members of the Arizona House who voted for the immigration bill, 31 voted for
another law that would have barred any presidential candidate from appearing
on the Arizona ballot in the next elections if he couldn't provide a birth
certificate that satisfied the Arizonans' standards. So, ban Obama. But
register guns with the federal government? Forget it. Too much paperwork. Too
much invasion of privacy.

It's this kind of self-contradicting conservatism, bordering on lunatic
libertarianism..."

Two things: 1) Libertarians are strongly against any form of national ID, and
this author's casual classification of libertarians as lunatic is incredibly
childish.

2) Although I agree with the author that national ID is a bad idea (TM), his
comparison here is quite off the scale: the president of the united states is
not only significantly more powerful than one person with a gun (he controls
thousands of people with guns, and nuclear weapons). In addition, there are
legal requirements for office that can be verified by a birth certificate (age
among others, and I won't be debating the value of these legal requirements),
whereas the federal government EXPLICITLY has no jurisdiction over gun
ownership. And these are contradictory laws passed recently by a transient
legislature - this is the Constitution of the United States of America. A
document, without which, there is no legality of the United States.

~~~
tptacek
Your second point is well taken, but your first is overreaching. He's not
suggesting libertarianism is lunacy. He's suggesting that the interpretation
of libertarianism that requires random people on the street to be better
documented than guns is lunatic.

It seems clear that reasonable people can take either side of that argument,
but the argument is reasonable only to the extent that it doesn't get reframed
as "Christopher Dickey versus the Concept of Libertarianism".

~~~
smallblacksun
The Arizona law, whether you support it or not, is about the farthest thing
from libertarianism.

------
alanh
“A Modest Proposal” — the author's title is the strongest indication this is a
parody, and not everyone will get the reference.

~~~
maw
I've seen "modest proposals" that whose authors didn't know that they're
supposed to be parodies. If my reading of Dickey's piece is on target, this is
one of those cases where the author didn't know.

~~~
tptacek
I'm guessing the former Bureau Chief for Paris, Cairo, and Central America for
Newsweek and (before that) the Washington Post has heard of Swift before.

Dickey's not the first journalist to make this point, which, stated concisely,
is that nobody would accept a law like this if it applied universally, because
it would mean they could spend a night in a city jail for forgetting their
wallet. They're only OK with Arizona's law because they haven't thought it
through.

------
Lendal
First, they will have to increase the federal prison capacity 10x, so they can
hold all the American citizens who rebel against this tyranny, and would
gladly spend the rest of their lives in a federal prison in protest. I would
be among them.

~~~
tptacek
Again: the impact of this "modest proposal" is that you could be held in a
city jail (note: there are jurisdictions where strip searches are standard
operating procedure before being admitted into a holding cell) for nothing
more than _forgetting your wallet_. He's not being serious.

The point is, in Arizona, this psychotic policy already has the force of law
if your skin happens to be brown.

~~~
starkfist
People have always been held in the city jail for not having ID when brown.
Arizona has just decided to be up front about it.

~~~
tptacek
This attitude presupposes that there's no substantial difference between the
police unlawfully harassing people because of their race, and a bona fide law
on the books inviting them to do so.

I don't believe that.

~~~
starkfist
There IS no substantial difference when you're sitting in jail.

~~~
tptacek
Of course I agree with that.

------
zacharyvoase
“In police states, this is a pretty ugly process—most often an attempt at
intimidation, or extortion, or both. In democracies, it can be pretty ugly,
too, and sometimes for the same reasons.”

Anyone else note the fallacy in the suggestion that police states and
democracies are mutually exclusive?

------
jrockway
I know this is a parody, but why do we, as a society, care about immigration
status? We're all citizens of Earth.

If "an illegal" is obeying the law and contributing to society, they're
already doing better than the 3.2% of "real Americans" in prison. So why
bother them? Why do we even care?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
In all cases I've seen (besides outright bigotry, which this law is) the
reason people care is because of one aspect of "obeying the law" that
_illegal_ aliens can't comply with: paying income taxes.

In a nutshell that's all governments care about most: pay your taxes and you
are no longer a problem.

~~~
skorgu
Illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes but their employers do contribute
payroll and social security payments. Not disagreeing at all, just clarifying
for non-US readers; wehave a lot of distinct taxes.

~~~
tptacek
The allegation would be that most illegal immigrants are not getting W2
deductions on their wages --- that being part of the point of hiring them.

~~~
jrockway
Not a lot different than my "contractor" friends that spend every waking
second trying to figure out how not to pay all their 1099 taxes.

------
hga
A duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345734>

