Well I think this has pretty much run its course.
roothorick has even begun the post-thread analysis
I am glad that
Atanvarno has been able to seperate the case from the principle and between us we may have made some small stand for reasoned debate. To those who disagreed with us, but still engaged with us on this level, thank you. If you do not try and question what your government does in the name of security or cost or practicality then you will one day find yourselves living in a country where the state dominates your lives without check or balance.
I have during my time lived in China and the UK.
In China you must always carry around an ID card and show it on demand to the police. Failure to do so will lead to a court appearance and possible imprisonment.
In the UK I am required to carry no such identification. In fact if I wanted - and was willing to stay in England and not claim state benefits - I need never own a single piece of ID in my life. I can drive freely and do not carry ID with me. My driving licence has no photo and if a policeman wants to see it they must ask me to bring it into a police station.
These are two ways to run a country. In one, it is the individual who must bend to the state. What freedom people have is granted to them by the government. In the other, the state must bend to the individual. It is considered that I am a free person going about my innocent business - which I am. If the police or state wish to check up on me or control me then it is they who must go out of their way to prove the necessity and must go out of their way not to tread on my toes in doing so.
For those who are interested in why I am so passionate about this persons freedom and am so concerned by the ease with which the posters here want to limit it, I have quoted part of an Observer (the weekend Guardian) article and attached a link to the whole thing. It only touches on the ID aspect and not the religious freedom aspect but is insightful nonetheless:
Quote:
Nick Cohen
Sunday June 30, 2002
The Observer
On 7 December 1950 Clarence Henry Willcock, a 54-year-old manager of a dry cleaning firm, was ordered to pull into the kerb of Ballards Lane, in Finchley, north London, by PC Harold Muckle. In the subsequent court hearings the prosecuting authorities never suggested Muckle believed Willcock was driving dangerously. PC Muckle nevertheless demanded to see his identity card. Willcock refused. Muckle handed him a form which stated that he must produce his card at a police station within 48 hours. Willcock threw it on the pavement saying, 'I will not accept this form.'
Willcock was duly convicted by Hornsey magistrates. The law requiring all citizens to carry identity cards had been rushed through Parliament in September 1939 and remained unrepealed after the war. Willcock had no legal defence, but he had moral and practical arguments and, in a sense, a patriotic case against the cards.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, supported all three in the Court of Appeal. He reluctantly concluded he had no choice other than to uphold the conviction but said: 'The police now, as a matter of routine, demand the production of national registration cards whenever they stop or interrogate a motorist for whatever cause. To demand production of the card from all and sundry, for instance from a woman who has left her car outside a shop longer than she should... is wholly unreasonable. To use Acts of Parliament passed for particular purposes in wartime when the war is a thing of the past tends to turn law-abiding citizens into lawbreakers. In this country we have always prided ourselves on the good feeling which exists between the police and the public.' Random demands to see identity cards, he continued, 'tend to make people resentful of the acts of the police and inclines them to obstruct the police instead of assisting them.' The following year, Winston Churchill's Conservative government abolished the cards.
LINK TO FULL ARTICLE
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It is perhaps a tribute to the success of the American state machine, John Ashcroft and his predecessors that it is an Englishman and a Norwegian who are now trying to convince Americans to uphold freedoms that they do not believe they hold.