See, now for the whole, Goldwater is someone I could respect, though I disagreed with him on several issues. He was far too hawkish for my taste, and his unswerving support of McCarthy and the McCarthyist witch-hunts severely diminishes him in my eyes. Still, he himself remarked to Dole near the end of his political career something to the effect of, "Isn't it ironic that you and I are now the liberal wing of the Republican party?" He also preached something I DO agree with, when he said:
When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
Rather prescient that comment, eh?
One other quote of his I like, in response to Falwell saying that "Every good Christian should be concerned" about Sandra Day O'Conner's appointment to the supreme court was:
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
Oh, as for universal health care: what makes you think that a system of universal health care for all citizens would remove your ability to choose your own health care provider? If you can still freely choose your own doctor and/or health plan or health care system, but now 60+ million more people are covered, how exactly do you lose, except possibly by paying more taxes? (Oh no, people who can afford it might have to pay more to help poor people. Such a tragedy. Really. Not.) How is it a "Government knows best" situation when you still can freely choose?
As for this ID, I've made several of my reasons for opposition quite clear. To state some of them simply again:
1) I consider this just the first step towards using those IDs as a mechanism of controlling the populace. Big Brother may not be watching us right now, but he sure as hell wants to.
2) I consider them an object that lessens our freedom. As I stated before, right now if you or I or anyone wishes to travel anywhere in this country by bus or by train or as a passenger in a car, we need no ID, no papers of any kind, just cash to pay our way. This law would force us to have and present ID in order to travel and to police at any time, regardless of the circumstances and whether or not we were doing anything wrong.
3) Having even more personal data encoded on the magnetic strip of an ID allows retailers even more access to our information, as they can easily retain that information when they swipe our ID; they do so now.
4) The aforementioned fraud concerns outlined by Leuyen, et al.
5) It doesn't actually DO anything to combat terrorism or even domestic terrorism. Foreign terrorists will have no problem getting fake IDs (if 15 year old high school students can obtain them, terrorists sure as hell can), and people like Tim McVeigh had a valid driver's license, and presumably would have had a valid national ID card as well.
6) I see it as stepping on State's Rights in that they lose the rights to decide their own standards for licenses and IDs, and who can and cannot obtain them. One size does NOT fit all.
7) It forces every DMV clerk to become an immigration expert, to be able to decide complicated legal matters of whether or not someone is or is not eligable for an ID. This becomes even more complicated if someone lacks vital records, such as a birth cirtificate, if those records were lost or destroyed (like what happened to many records in Katrina) or if they're an immigrant from a 3rd world nation that never kept such records to begin with.
8) It will cost 12+ billion dollars that that each state would be forced to pay, thus coming directly out of our own pockets.
So, again, I see a law that gains us no or minimal appreciable benefits, and has a large number of downsides ranging from freedom issues, to fraud, to slippery slope concerns to cost issues. With so little to gain, and so much to lose, I remain adamant in my opposition.
-Arlos
