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American patsies
It is in one's personal interest, says the luminary nincompoop from Harvard, Alan M. Dershowitz, that in the wake of Sept. 11 citizens should happily queue up for photographs and fingerprints so that they may routinely prove their status.
Those who opt out, Mr. Dershowitz ominously opines in The New York Times, might invite greater scrutiny, say, at the airport. Citizens are automatically suspect because they do not volunteer to be inventoried by virtue of nothing but their existence.
Now do you see where this is going?
Constitutional scholar Robert A. Levy writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Ronald Reagan's attorney general, William French Smith, wanted national ID cards to curb illegal immigration. Martin Anderson, a Reagan aide, "caustically" proffered a method cheaper, immune to theft or counterfeiting, and waterproof. Just "tattoo a number on the inside of everybody's arm." That was the end of that.
Mr. Dershowitz says we ought to sacrifice anonymity for security. Why? So that a government previously feckless in patrolling the borders and dispatching our enemies may raid our rights?
The shift toward authoritarianism and away from the right to be left alone is as obnoxious as it is dangerous to liberty.
As so often has been the case, the honest citizen is coaxed with fear and falsehood into becoming a patsy for liberal tyranny.
