National ID Card...No Way!!!

I read recently that the National I.D. card is back on the table and approval for it is growing.

What is wrong with Americans ? Are we sheep to be herded by the National Shepherd? Where is the individualism that won this country from the British and then stretched it across the entire continent to the shores of the Pacific. Even the oceans could not hold back our culture and burning desire for FREEDOM! Yet, today, we are begging the federal government to take our freedoms away ! This is scandalous! This borders on cowardice of the first magnitude !

Are we so quick to give back the liberties bought with the precious blood of our forefathers, our ancestors, and in many cases our immediate relatives. In cemetaries all over the globe lie the bodies of American men and women who put their lives on the line and shed their blood up to the "last full measure" to ensure you and I the freedoms we are now screaming for the Federal Government to take away!

Some example we are setting for the rest of the world ! Look at the cowardly Americans. They talk a good game but when the going gets tough they run to hide under the wings of the Federal Nanny !

Our national motto is: "In God We Trust." Apparently it's a lie! If we truly placed our trust in God we would not be so hasty to misplace it in a Government which is already too big and intrusive. There comes a time when we have to stand on our own two feet. Sure there is risk involved in living free ! That's why it's called freedom. It means simply that you (you and I) take responsibility for ourselves ! Example: If I'm afraid to get on a plane....then I WON'T get on a plane ! We have to understand, as did our forefathers, that living free does not mean, necessarily, living secure ! To live free it is required that we must live with certain insecurities, or risks.

The historian Edward Gibbon had it about right when he wrote of ancient Athens: "In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all ! : security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted NOT TO GIVE TO SOCIETY BUT FOR SOCIETY TO GIVE TO THEM, when the freedom they wanted most was FREEDOM FROM RESPONSIBILITY, then ATHENS CEASED TO FREE.......AND NEVER WAS FREE AGAIN !

I agree that we need government. But, I believe as do we Lutherans about pastors. They are there only for "good order". I believe the government does some things well.... as it should. One such thing is "provide for the common defense" with a well trained and equipped military. I believe as did one of our founding fathers, Thomas Paine, who said: "Government, even in it's best state, is a necessary evil; in it's worse state, and intolerable one." (from: Common Sense) . In this Democratic Republic, we call America, it is up to us, the citizens, to keep our government on a short rein. It is our duty as citizens to keep the tenticles of government out of our every day existance. They have no business there. We must be wary of "Knee-Jerk" responses to danger, real or imagined, such as I believe the National I.D. Card to be. If the government wants to "Card" somebody, why not make every one not a citizen of this country carry one while inside our borders?

How dangerous is Big Government? Well, I believe Alexis de Tocqueville sumed it up nicely when writing of the dangers of big government:

Quote:"it covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds, and the most energetic characters, cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existance; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinquishes, and stupifies people, 'til each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Unquote. (Alexis de Tocqueville on "Big Government".)

Well, there you have it. Animals with a shepherd!

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be counted among the animals who need a shepherd. I, like millions of Americans before me, will live free! I do not choose to beg the Government to take back the liberty my ancestors fought and died that I might have. It's blasphemy!

I want my grandson to live, and grow up, in a free country. A country which will allow him to be everything he is capable of being. I don't want his prospects to be lessened by the intrusions of government. I owe him that. I owe him an America in which he can be FREE. Free to succeed and, yes, free to fail ! I owe him an America my father, and forefathers, placed in my safe keeping (as did yours) at my (our) birth. To be worthy custodians of this nation's freedom, we must insure that we pass it along no less free that when we received it !

If the government gives the American people what they are crying out in fear for, a National I.D. Card, they must make it voluntary. Then I won't have to break the law by not carrying it.

God Save the South!

Longstreet