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Congressman
Ron Paul
14th District (R) |
Washington, DC- Congressman Ron Paul Wednesday
denounced the national ID card provisions contained in
the intelligence bill being voted on in the U.S. House
of Representatives, while urging his colleagues to reject
the bill and its new layers of needless bureaucracy.
“National ID cards are not proper in a free society,”
Paul stated. “This is America, not Soviet Russia.
The federal government should never be allowed to demand
papers from American citizens, and it certainly has no
constitutional authority to do so.”
“A national identification card,
in whatever form it may take, will allow the federal government
to inappropriately monitor the movements and transactions
of every American,” Paul continued. “History
shows that governments inevitably use such power in harmful
ways. The 9-11 commission, whose recommendations underlie
this bill, has called for internal screening points where
identification will be demanded. Domestic travel restrictions
are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free nations.
It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to
carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive
or board an airplane.”
“Nationalizing standards for drivers
licenses and birth certificates, and linking them together
via a national database, creates a national ID system
pure and simple. Proponents of the national ID understand
that the public remains wary of the scheme, so they attempt
to claim they’re merely creating new standards for
existing state IDs. Nonsense! This legislation imposes
federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a
federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is
still stamped with the name of your state.”
“Those who are willing to allow the
government to establish a Soviet-style internal passport
system because they think it will make us safer are terribly
mistaken,” Paul concluded. “Subjecting every
citizen to surveillance and screening points actually
will make us less safe, not in the least because it will
divert resources away from tracking and apprehending terrorists
and deploy them against innocent Americans! Every conservative
who believes in constitutional restraints on government
should reject the authoritarian national ID card and the
nonsensical intelligence bill itself.
LARRY ELLISON'S National
ID Card (below)
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