Welcome to Soviet Washington, DC. Your travel papers please.

This is being covered by several blogs, but I had to put my two cents in anyway.

This is how tyranny begins. Small infringements on rights are made to sound reasonable, due to circumstances at the time. The tyrants-to-be build on people's fears, and propose 'solutions' that may or may not work to fix the problem, using fear to get people to consent to give up rights and freedoms. Then another fear comes along, and the tyrants-to-be do it all over again. This time it's easy to go a little farther, to infringe peoples rights even more, because people are used to the last infringement. It's normal to them now. So a bigger infringement is seen as being not much, because it's not a lot more than what people are used to. And people are afraid, and willing, because it might fix the cause of their fear. (This works even better if the previous infringement even appears to have worked.) Eventually, you have tyranny.

How does this apply to DC? First you have the intermittent checkpoints they're creating now. Checking peoples ID for their addresses and, if they don't live in the neighborhood, making them give a 'legitimate purpose' to enter. Once people get used to that, and start thinking it's 'normal' and 'legitimate,' they'll say "We're seeing results, but it's not as effective as it could be. There's still a crime problem." The next step will be to make the checkpoint permanent. Then once people are used to that, they'll add more. Then they'll say "It worked in this neighborhood, we're going to do it in other 'high crime' areas." Other cities will start, because "it worked in Washington." Eventually, we'll need to state a 'legitimate purpose' when you try to cross state or even county lines, and to enter cities. Then you'll have to state a 'legitimate purpose,' and get government approval, before you travel. Travel papers. Just like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

If anyone thinks this is far-fetched, that it could never go that far in America, look at gun control for an example. Washington DC is a good place to start. First they started restricting some guns. They restricted when and who could carry guns away from home. Who could carry concealed. Soon, very few could own a handgun. Eventually, the laws became so pervasive that they dictate what you can do with a gun inside your own home. Today, carrying a functional gun from one room to another in your own home is illegal in DC.

Look at gun control in Canada. In Great Britain. In Australia. The American Colonies of the British Empire. (Wait, that last one didn't really take, did it?)

Look at Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. They started with small infringements, or infringing the rights of unpopular groups. Then more, bits and pieces at a time. Eventually, they fell into tyranny.

If we do not stop this today, if we allow these small, popular infringements to continue, they will build into tyranny. It may take ten, fifty, or one hundred years, but it will happen.

Unless it is stopped today.