> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Ronn Blankenship
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Verzonden: Sunday, September 30, 2001 4:18 AM
> Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Onderwerp: RE: Your papers, please . . .
> My comment about the SS (the Schutzstaffel, not the Secret Service) is
> in recognition of the fact that what some people in the US don't like
> about the idea of a national ID card is that requiring everybody to
> carry "papers" may be followed sooner or later by a requirement to
> stop and show those papers frequently, as we here in the US have seen
> countless times in films depicting life in the former Soviet Union or
> under the Nazis: the jackbooted thug with a submachine gun slung under
> his arm demanding, "Your papers, please, comrade . . ."
That is an irrational fear, bordering on paranoia. For example, having to
carry an ID has been mandatory in Germany for longer than I can remember,
but Germans are still not stopped regularly (or irregularly) by "jackbooted
thugs with a submachine gun", demanding "Ausweis, bitte" ("Identification,
please").
Carrying an ID has been mandatory in The Netherlands for some time now, and
I assume other Western countries have had similar laws for quite a while
too. None of them have turned into a totalitarian state like the Soviet
Union or Nazi Germany, though.
Jeroen
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