The announcement, though in the pipes for a while, that the United Kingdom will move to adopt mandatory Identification Cards by 2013 was a sudden one. Though nothing, after the emasculation of the House of Lords and Britain’s inexplicable joining of the war in Iraq, that Tony Blair’s regime comes up with surprises me anymore, this issue cuts to the very heart of what is left of English freedom.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m an Anglophile. The majority of my ancestors were from the British Isles, and I happen to enjoy English authors (Shakespeare through Tolkien), television (Fawlty Towers and Monty Python), and, perhaps most of all, their beers. Therefore it pains me to see a kingdom, once the mightiest Empire since Rome, falling as far as it has.
From what I’ve gathered from the BBC reports the implementation of the aforesaid ID cards will go into effect, if the measure becomes law, starting in 2007, with biometric data, i.e. fingerprints and eye recognition, in passports and driver’s licenses. By the time they are supposed to become mandatory an estimated 80 percent of British subjects already will be carrying them due to their driving and traveling needs.
Why is this happening? It is for four reasons. One, and this is the issue that the government will harp on in its campaign to get voters behind this extraordinary, though not unprecedented policy, is terrorism and crime. These are the two great bugaboos of our time, and people (some people) are desperate for any type of security against these threats.
Second is the issue of immigration and benefits. Britain, like so many Western countries, has had a relatively open door to refugees and non-white immigrants who started flooding in after World War II. These migrants, many of whom in the beginning came legally, have also spawned the phenomenon of illegal immigration. While legal immigrants are entitled to the benefits of the European welfare state, illegal immigrants, who pay little in the way of taxes, are often a drain on the system. Therefore, the third prong of the campaign will be dedicated to the notion that if everyone has an ID card (including those whose families have lived in Britain since pre-Roman times) illegal immigration will be stymied.
The last reason is certainly more conspiratorial, yet perhaps more true to form of Blair’s government: absolute control. Mind you, this is the same government that banned handguns, wants to ban fox hunting, practically abolished the right to self defense, and will, if given the chance, sign away Britain’s control over its currency (trading the pound, one of the most stable currencies in world history for the infant Euro) and foreign and domestic policy to the silverware polishers in Brussels. Branding subjects like cattle would certainly help this process along.
Yes, you say, but what does this have to do with me? The truth is that, unless you’re an English exchange student, or plan to emigrate to the UK in the near future, it doesn’t mean much. However, Europe always tends to be a about a decade ahead of the United States (Britain, being about five years behind Europe, is a middle ground for these type of experiments), so it is important that we try to learn from what those across the Atlantic have already lost.
We really do live in precarious times. The same braying jackasses in Britain, the kind who stood next to the Queen during her Jubilee and then tried to sell her kingdom down the Thames the next day also make their home in the United States. Given the ease of passage of the PATRIOT Act, the Alien and Sedition Act of modern times, I would not be surprised that if a representative from either coast, elected by touchy feely urban liberals, or from the cow and corn states, spouting off against the need to keep the Arabs at bay, could get a respectable amount of Congressmen to side with them on the implementation of a similar scheme in the United States.
We, as citizens of a free republic, cannot allow this to happen. Therefore, not only must we learn from what history teaches us about the establishment of dictatorships, but we must also keep abreast of the dangers around us in modern times. To quote our nation’s first great statesman, Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither.” Let us hope that, so close to Armistice and Remembrance Day, those British boys, slaughtered at the Marne and the Somme over 85 years ago, have descendents of equal courage who refuse to abide by the introduction of tyranny into Great Britain. If they successfully resist, then Rule Britannia’s lyrics will once again be true, and “Britons never will be slaves” on that “Blest Isle.”