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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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This is one of those things where the Anglosphere simply has a different view on what the government should be doing compared to Napoleonic countries.

If the government maintains a register of everyone legally present in the country, then it can issue certified copies of entries in the register easily. This is perfectly technically feasible, and several countries have done it. The UK was going to do it under Blair, but he got voted out - the first thing the coalition did on taking power in 2010 was to abolish the register that was supposed to be the basis for the ID card scheme. It would be even easier to do for the US technically than it was for us because you normally issue SSNs at birth. But most Americans, and even most politically engaged Brits, think that making such a register is an act of petty tyranny.

If you don't have a population register, then all an ID means is that at some point some appropriate authority figure said "this birth certificate and this photo belong to the same person" and the government wrote this down.