The Desire for Liberty is not Nostalgia

First can I reassure Mr Djilo that I in no way resent being compared to Groucho Marx? I’ve never found the Marx brothers very funny myself, but I assume the fault is in me, and know that many others, whose taste I respect,  do think they’re funny,  – so  I’d still say that Groucho has contributed far more to human happiness than his Trier-born namesake. Not that Karl was humourless, he had a good line in heavy-handed sarcasm.

 

But I do rather resent what Michael Kenny writes: ‘The point about ID cards is that we live in an ever shrinking world in which we have an ever greater number of people willing and able to commit atrocities on an almost apocalyptic scale. The means for private individuals and groups to carry out clandestine 9/11 style attacks wasn't really an issue in horse & cart ye olde englande, and that is why the quaint liberties and freedoms Peter romanticises over were the standard of the day. The present day predicament is further exacerbated by lax immigration controls and the multiculturalism our three party state subscribes to. That means ever increasing numbers of foreign peoples moving about various countries about whom we know little or nothing. In short, the kind of societal and cultural chaos which prevails in the West today needs the necessary safeguards in place to ensure that that chaos doesn't result in catastrophe of one or another. I'm no more in favour of ID cards (etc) than the next person. But I have to concede that as a nation we have (unfortunately) fundamentally altered the make-up of our society, and as such a price will have to be paid.’

 

Because my response has to be ‘So what?’

 

I must mention here the old question of ‘What does the ‘D’ stand for in ‘ID cards’, which  I think important because the use of this strange non-acronym is a symptom of the general thoughtlessness of so many when discussing these things.

 

There is nothing ‘quaint’ about restraints on power. They are as valid now as they ever were, and the behaviour of the Western powers after September 11 2011 (Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, waterboarding, vastly increased surveillance, ‘Homeland Security’, the Civil Contingencies Act, catch-all laws against ‘glorifying terrorism’) would have been immensely worse had they not been restrained by Bills of Rights whose provisions are as modern as the Internet – framed as they were by men who knew well the universal, timeless character of power, and its tendency to corrupt those who wield it.

 

Tyranny can arise amidst modern technology and buildings, and has done so many times in the past century. Imprisonment without trial, torture chambers, arbitrary execution have all flourished in the age of radio, TV,  the computer and the jet engine. And so safeguards against these things are just as necessary in such times. The need to defend liberty will never be out of date.

The September 11 2001 attacks were carried out by persons legally in the United States with valid visas and identity documents. So far as I know the same is true of the culprits of the 7th July 2005 bombings in London.

 

I fail to see how obliging law-abiding British subjects to carry identity cards would in any way overcome ‘ever increasing numbers of foreign peoples moving about various countries about whom we know little or nothing. In short, the kind of societal and cultural chaos which prevails in the West’.  

 

The solution to that is to control your own borders. If you do not (and we do not),  then registration of the law-abiding lawful residents will in no way inhibit the behaviour of the unregistered, unrecorded non-residents, who will by definition be spared from the need to carry such cards.

 

Registration of existing residents is a wholly illogical response to the problem Mr Kenny cites. In any case, what use are such documents. A resident person, born and brought up here and properly registered, could perfectly easily decide to pursue a criminal terrorist course. How exactly would compelling him to carry such a card inhibit him? On the contrary, anyone who placed any value on such things would therefore be obliged to let such a person pass. He has an ‘ID’ card. Therefore he is assumed ( as were the September 11 murderers) to be legitimate.

 

The problems of whether ‘ID’ cards can be forged, manipulated – and the problem of what they actually declare - are not addressed. They cannot be. Such cards are useless in combating terror or crime Such a card merely says that the authorities (if they issued the card) believe the bearer to be who the card says he is. The police officer who takes this on trust may well be making the biggest mistake of his life. They are not merely useless against real terror, which is very well-organized and always has perfect documentation. They provide dangerous false reassurance to the bureaucratic mind.  

 

Their only use is to allow the state to have more power over the law-abiding, and more information about the law-abiding than it could normally gather. And, as I say, to reverse the proper relation between state and individual.

 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn yearned for left-wing western intellectuals to be granted a brief stay in the Gulag, and to hear the guards bawl at them, as they marched meekly off to their slave-work in the dawn twilight, the words ‘Ruki Nazad!’ (Hands behind your backs!), and to realise that they would actually have to adopt this humiliating, defenceless posture or be beaten until they did. He reckoned it might cure them of their fellow-travelling.

 

In the same spirit I do wish all these ‘ID card’ merchants could be transported back to the days of the Warsaw Pact, and find out what it is like to be in a country where the police can stop anyone when they feel like it and demand ‘Dokumenti, pajalsta!’. Once you’ve actually seen and felt what it’s like to be a state serf, perhaps you’ll value your freedom  bit more. In the meantime, trust me. It’s important, and nothing to do with ‘Ye Olde England’. Shame on you.