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Discussion point XVI The United Nations and the various NGOs which operate within its orbit, which naturally sees the world in terms of nation-states, regards statelessness as a ‘problem’ and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights include the phrase “everyone has the right to a nationality”.
Yet as the world becomes more cosmopolitan and globalised, the primary threats to security are themselves non-state based (such as radical Islam) and private trade without the intermediation of states has never been easier in the dawning age of virtualised networked economics. Could we one day see a time in which many see modern narrow concepts of nationality and ‘citizenship’ of any Westphalian style state as an imposition rather than a ‘right’?
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No, they see nation states as an historical awkward stage which has to be brought to an end so they can form The United Federation Of Planets and thus Utopia.
No, they regard ungovernedness as a problem since like all good post-Hegelians they consider that the individual has no existence without formal community; literally, a person without an official ID stamped on their forehead doesn’t exist.
That’s what they’re hoping for, sort of, yes, because of course once there is only one panglobal state, there will be nowhere anyone can hide. God help us all.
I would certainly join the Neo-Victorian phyle in a jiffy!
Damn Crake…you beat me to it. This discussion point was just begging for a Neal Stephenson reference. 🙂
Interesting. I disagree with pretty much everything you wrote.
At the very core of what David Carr of this parish calls Tranzi (Transnationalist Progressive) Philosophy is a horror of what Marx called rootless cosmopolitans. Fixing people into manageable political units is the most basic prerequisite of everything they want to do and fluid severalty is highly corrosive to their world view. Multiculturalism (a form of cultural apartheid) is also a diametric opposite of cosmopolitanism.
The Tranzis want a super nation (they are ‘super-statists’, not anti-statists), they certainly do not want looser pre-Westphalian ideas of nationality and they sure as hell do not want no nation at all (in fact they want the mother-of-all-nations).
I didn’t say they did, and if you think that’s even vaguely one possible future you’re in Cloud Cuckoo Land, somewhere on the par of a small Inuit hamlet discussing how they’ll run the world when they’ve conquered it.
It’s my humble opinion that the Game is already Over.
Quoting myself to clarify-
Sorry Perry, my previous answer missed the point. What I was saying, or trying to say, was that they’d like everybody to believe that by giving up “local citizenships” they’ll be becoming freer in the way you’d like things to be, whereas what people will actually be doing is tying themselves into the Global citizenship thing; throwing away the protections afforded by localist citizenship without actually gaining any “uncitizenship”.
I feel no need to talk you out of a nice florid suicide (ideally on YouTube) if you think the game is over Ian. Now that the ritual insults are out of the way, the game is only just starting and (takes deep breath for a run-on verb intensive rant-lette) the technologically driven economic realities indicate to me that the top down Tranzi world view will disintegrate from its own absurdities under the virtualised emergent blizzard of low level capitalism driven by ever lower global transaction costs. Phew.
Let me get all meta-marxist and venture that it is damn close to a historical inevitability. I am just concerned about getting squashed under the twitching corpse’s tentacles in the transitional period which I suspect we have been edging onto for about five years now.
Seeing identity tied up with political rather than social community is what Westphalian states are all about. The alternative is not necessarily ‘un-citizenship’ but rather the older more mutable notion, rather like Copernicus seeing himself as German and Polish, without either mattering all that much.
I would love to have no nationality, then no government could have any claim on me or my property, unfortunately the flip side to this is that I would have no claim on them either.
I’m possibly about to move to another country, and plan to drop my british citizenship as soon as is feasible (7 years if I understand the legalities of my destination correctly) I would dearly love it if I didn’t have to take up the mantle of citizenship of another country, but the declaration that everyone has a right to a nationality makes no provision for those that want none. It should read “Everyone must have a nationality.” the practicalities of nationlessness are that travel becomes impossible and any meaningful trade becomes very difficult (try getting a bank account anywhere in the world without a valid form of ID).
Is isn’t it just that it’s bad to be stuck in a “refugee camp” your whole life because no country will let you in?
Some of u guys are missing the point. Refugee camps? He’s talking about how things are going not how that are now. Loyalties to states aint what they used to be and with no overarching ideology to hang their hats on, all the state is left with to offer is unsustainable ponzi schemes, which don’t really compare to the past allure of Volk or God or Flag. In the end people go where their pocketbooks point them and when the state starts to really get in the way of demassified economic society, the end is nigh.
Perry de Havilland:
An interesting view, but so far, I can’t escape the impression that virtualization has made surveillance, regulation, and control only easier. This is especially true for surveillance: in physical space, it has to be arranged as a special operation that is costly, easy to evade, and apt to provoke opposition on grounds of privacy; in cyberspace, logging and forever remembering everything is a built-in feature – agents of the state need only the permission to make a few keystrokes to get any information they want. Regulation and control are also made much easier by the emergence of the networked database state. I wish you were right, but just about everything I’ve seen so far indicates that modern technology and the modern sort of unbridled collectivist statism go perfectly hand in hand. I’d say that this time, the effect is even more extreme than a few decades ago, when the emergence of mass media was a key factor in the rise of a tidal wave of collectivist populism (and in less lucky places, outright totalitarianism).
“everyone has the right to a nationality”
And who enforces this? What overarching authority can force a sovereign state to grant citizenship to an individual who doesn’t otherwise have a ‘nationality’?
That is, assuming that in this context nationality and citizenship are the same thing.
Which they need not be, of course.
Let me get all meta-marxist and venture that it is damn close to a historical inevitability.
Perry, if it is any relief I would tend to call your analysis Marxian rather than Marxist. I feels better.
I gotta say, I agree with both Ian and Perry on this, and no, I don’t believe there is a conflict.
The nasties are winning, and by shroud waving and other guilt inducing methods they are dragging the loopies and the uninformed along with them. The discussion on Fair Trade exemplifies this; the concept just sounds so, well, fair, and who can be bothered to do the research to find out just how both nasty and loopy and poverty enforcing it is at bottom. As a marketing ploy? Fine, but the moral superiority it grants itself and any fellow travellers enhance its success in NuLab land.
With the LibDems and the Tories all singing from the NuLab hymn book, and anyone disagreeing with them being labelled as anti-humanity, the paradigm is on a roll.
Far from being over, as so many of its proponents claim, this is the year that the global warming debate will take off, although I guess it will be another three years before the alarmist view ceases to dominate all political and media viewpoints. In that time a lot of controlling legislation will be put in place at both the national and EU level, and it will remain in place regardless of how discredited AGW becomes. These people, once they have granted themselves powers of control, will not discard them for any reason as trivial as the justification for them being baseless.
AGW based laws are just an example of a more general trend, and that trend will continue. On this basis I agree with Ian B. in the short to medium term.
In the long term?
Sigh,
I have been predicting that the EU will collapse within twenty years for twenty years now, and I still believe it. Triumph of hope over reality I guess; an affliction not confined to the AGW proponents.
Still, listen to the rhetoric from politicians. The EU rabbits on about democracy in nearly every speech, while dismantling democracy across its lands. The terms tolerance and prosperity are flung about with merry abandon despite the growing evidence that tolerance is diminishing in absolute terms and prosperity in relative terms. The disconnect between the political class and reality on the ground will generate a hatred and contempt for these people across all the rest of society. People will know, from their day to day experience, that they are being lied to every time a politician opens his/her mouth.
I suspect Adriana would be able to tell us a great deal about the truth of this, and how it works in real life.
I believe Perrys forecast will one day come true, the whole rotten edifice will collapse, with a vast amount of misery and harm inflicted before, during and, for a time, after. But, short/medium term? I go along with Ian. It will get a whole lot worse first.
The concept of “statelessness” is not a Westphalian one. People lived under the early modern state, they did not live within it. The cartelised global state system that conceives of people as having some “natural” belonging to a state, doesn’t contain Westphalian states but something else. (Insofar as Philip Bobbit’s concept is intelligible (not much), BTW, they aren’t “market states” either.)
The conception of nationality as a pigeonhole is a post-Westphalian imposition. What the current world order, from the UN declaration up to the most recent developments of “e-borders” – a transnational surveillance and control of human movements has done is complete a romantic collectivist conception of the individual as an organ of the nation, and the state as a reflection of that organic entity, with a club of such clubs imposing the same model on all people, and by partitioning and monitoring people as elements of state, all states too. The UN declaration arises from a desire to prevent the abuses of humanity in the World Wars, but in effect universalises the fascist model. The current state model is the fascist state, not the Westphalian one.
The Westphalian concept of the sovreign state did not require any particular relationship between the state, its territory and the inhabitants of its territory. Quite the reverse: it said that those relationships were none of other states’ business. It did not require persons to be embedded in a state. Nor did it require the state to be everywhere.
I recall a book written by someone in the 1950s/early 60s about his efforts to travel the world without a passport. His view was that he was a citizen of the world not of a nation state. If I remember correctly he managed to get around quite a few countries. Anyone remember the book/his name?
A true story; a squaddie in the British Army stationed in Germany goes to see his CO. Like to change my name sir, he says. CO says okay, we will set this in motion, but you are married right? Your wife lives in the camp with you?
Yessir, says the soldier. In which case, says the CO, she needs to fill in the papers too. Need to see her passport.
Sorry, she hasn’t got one sir.
Then how did she get into Germany?
Flown in sir, with the other wives by the RAF.
Okay, well, her birth certificate then.
Hasn’t got one sir. Born on a refugee ship, smuggled into UK, so she isn’t from anywhere. Stateless.
Oh fucking hell, says the weary CO.
To fall back on my usual mantra: “People are tribal.”
As the economic/technicalogical boom of the last century continues into this one, ‘narrow concepts of nationality and citizenship’ will become irrelevant in many people’s experience, but should some interruption to the march of progress occur, (war, economic breakdown, a mass viral outbreak or the sudden arrival of a mini- or even maxi- ice-age), then those narrow concepts will become very important again.
As a species, we need to belong to a tribe and we need to know our status in that tribe. Apart from the legalistic and historical interpretations of what a state is, the human emotional and psychological need remains.
Currently our needs our met by sports clubs, political affiliations, facebook or a myriad other things, but when push comes to shove and we need to know where our next meal or our next drink of clean water is coming from, and who will help us get them or who will compete with us for them, then geographical boundaries will regain their former prominence.
Currently, our political leaders have it easy. As long as nothing nasty happens to us, then they can go on playing their games, but should things turn south, (whether through their fault or through external circumstances), they will quickly be torn down and a new leader will emerge.
So, let’s hope that the sunspots start again soon and that the UN Security Council gets it’s act together over Iran, and that neither the jihadis nor the deep greens get their hands on a nasty new virus, (oh, and the swans get better).
I’ve done a bit of bllogging on this interesting subject myself recently:
http://vimothy.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/barriers-for-entry-into-the-market-of-the-powers/
In IR there is a lot of discussion and hype about the possible emergence of a post-Westphalian order, but this is mostly centred around the failings of African and Middle Eastern states, where many African states are thought to be on the verge of collapse and disintegration into smaller units, and Middle Eastern states are thought to be unnecessarily granular and in need of some Pan-Arab empire building.
Both normative propositions, and infected with problematic leftist assumptions, IMHO.
How much Hegel have you read exactly? I ask this not be snotty (well not entirely), but to establish a serious point.
As far as I can tell, Hegel’s politio-ethical theory is gaga, but the idea that a Hegel’s man receives his personal validation from a particular imposition on the part of the state-apparatus is a phantasm of your imagination (or possibly Karl Popper’s).
Now, in itself, the fact that you feel the need to misrepresent philosophers in the comments section of blogs is not terribly important. But it is important if Libertarians imagine that the problems of the world eminate from a widespread adherence to their own confused and garbled interpretation of German Idealism that they picked up from a blog post on Rothbard on Hegel (or whatever). You’re never going to defeat the bastards unless you deal with them as they are and not how you perversely wish them to be.
(If you want an example of what I mean. People are generally statists on education not because of some theory of organic mass consciousness or whatever, but because they genuinely can’t conceive of how a large number of people can be educated well enough to get a decent job without mandatory state-run education. That is to say, they are not mad Hegelians, but just ignorant and unimaginative.)
As a side note, it’s perfectly possible to have an idealist conception of the state and be substantially politically Libertarian. Bosanquet is a good example, early Oakeshott another.
As for the Discussion point. I thought we’d more or tested the Pre-Westphalian model to destruction
“…the technologically driven economic realities indicate to me that the top down Tranzi world view will disintegrate from its own absurdities under the virtualised emergent blizzard of low level capitalism driven by ever lower global transaction costs.”
And hence, some sort of institutional framework is necessary (and emergent), because transaction costs are nevertheless greater than zero.
It’s really not fair people on my side of the pond miss the first opportunity for juicy Stephenson references. What the hell, I live in California – I’m used to everything being settled before it’s my turn to vote.
My perception is statelessness has always been viewed more as an inconvenience for states rather than individuals. After all, if you want to get rid of someone, the easiest way is to ship him back to a government that’s treaty-bound to take him.
As far as intentional statelessness is concerned, the IRS, which is the real world government, doesn’t recognize it.
For sure, but do that have to be modern regulatory states?
I’ll see your Thirty Years War and raise you World Wars I & II.
“As for the Discussion point. I thought we’d more or tested the Pre-Westphalian model to destruction.”
Exactly — and as Doug North has pointed out,
“Institutions are formed to reduce uncertainty in human exchange. Together with the technology employed they determine the costs of transacting (and producing). It was Ronald Coase (1937 and 1960) who made the crucial connection between institutions, transaction costs and neo-classical theory; a connection which even now has not been completely understood by the economics profession. Let me state it baldly. The neoclassical result of efficient markets only obtains when it is costless to transact. When it is costly to transact, institutions matter. And because a large part of our national income is devoted to transacting, institutions and specifically property rights are crucial determinants of the efficiency of markets.”
For sure, but do that have to be modern regulatory states?
Well, they have to be something with the sufficient power to grant property rights and arbitrate disputes. What else could they be? Are there empirical examples of the sustained growth experienced by the Westphalian nation states outside the nation-state system?
“Fixing people into manageable political units is the most basic prerequisite of everything they want to do and fluid severalty is highly corrosive to their world view.”
Might I ask to what exactly you refer with the term ‘fluid severalty’ Perry – dual citizenship? Having parents from two different countries? Bilingualism? Holding properties in more than one country? All of the above, plus…?
The case of Taiwan is interesting in that the people who live here generally regard themselves as ‘Taiwanese’ qua ‘of Taiwan’ and in some cases as Taiwan citizens – yet Taiwan has no diplomatic recognition from the UN or the countries that matter (the US, UK, Australia, Japan and so on…). Are the people of Taiwan thus already stateless in some yet-to-be-exploited sense?
There is certainly no shortage of people in Taiwan who regard their Taiwanese ‘citizenship’ as something of an imposition since it restricts their travel options, gives them cause to look over their shoulders just a little bit more when investing in China, and of course, within Taiwan itself, leaves them vulnerable to the various depredations of the state (european style taxes for the middle-classes, socialised healthcare and other monstrosities).
In a few weeks time, Taiwan will hold a presidential election in which the KMT candidate, who is fluent in English having spent time in the US when he was younger, is widely expected to win by some margin. His DPP opponent is attempting to use the Taiwan electoral commission to disqualify him from the election owing to a (disputed) allegation of dual citizenship. The constitution forbids people of dual citizenship from running for the presidential office. Aside from this being a display of how desperate the DPP candidate is not to lose, it raises the interesting question of whether ordinary people in Taiwan actually give a shit about their Taiwanese ‘nationality’ anymore following two terms of unpopular Taiwanese nationalist government. I suspect the number of shits being given over this issue is not particularly high…
The number of mainland Chinese tourists expected to visit Taiwan is also expected to rise over the next four or five years due to the recent sea-change in government resulting from the elections for the legislative assembly – the China-friendly KMT now control a sizeable majority of the assembly. Aside from expecting a boom in the tourist industry here, I wonder whether greater movement of mainland Chinese to Taiwan will have some observable effect on the mainland Chinese sense of identity over the years to come. Somehow I doubt it.
The reason why I wonder about Chinese identity is that I have doubts about Taiwan’s security over the medium term future. Specifically, I worry how important (or not) Chinese nationalist rhetoric is to the survival of the PRC state and whether some kind of military action against Taiwan is being held in reserve as a kind of fascist insurance policy by the PRC. Yet I don’t think that a rise in mainland tourists to Taiwan over the short to medium term will help to quell such nationalist sentiment on the mainland. China just has too many people for tourism to effect a widespread change of sentiment in a just a few years.
Whilst the first DPP government here in Taiwan attempted to establish a Taiwanese nationalism – I really think that project is effectively dead now (and good fucking riddance too) – the people of this island may be about to find they are living their lives increasingly in a state of statelessness.
Yes. I feel that I fall under this category right now.
For example, my great-grandparents were born in England, Norway, Germany, the United States and Romania. I’m a ‘citizen’ of Canada, but I doubt that my ‘nationality’ is Canadian, despite state-driven propaganda to the contrary. In fact, I sincerely doubt the existence of ‘Canadian nationality’ full stop (though that’s another argument). In terms of citizenship along the lines of nation-states, what if, for example, I identify with my English, Norwegian, German, American or Romanian heritage? Can I claim nationality? I certainly can’t (easily) claim citizenship in these places. In this case, Canadian ‘citizenship’ is more of a yoke than a benefit. An imposition and not a right.
So let’s say you are right and WW1 and 2 represent failures of the Westphalian model the logical conclusion would not be to return the known flawed pre-Westphalian model, but to go on to a post-Westphalian one, which is precisely the raison d’etre of the UN.
For mine own part, I think the Rule of Law (not in the meaningless version of the phrase implying that laws can rule, but a particular mode of government by a sovereign power, which emerged in certain parts of early modern europe) is, in the words of Oakeshott, ‘the most civilized and least burdensome conception of the state yet to be devised’ and I’d like to see it defended against all its enemies, tranzis, Fascists or even some Libertarians if the case need be.
Lord! what lessons of history are lost to loose terminologies.
States, Nations, Nation-States, Cultures, Civilizations (Western, et al.), Citizens, Aliens, etc., etc. – all are meaningless to discussions without their historic contexts.
“Nationality” as a “Human Right,” probably means nothing more than having an opportunity to achieve individual identity in terms of some collective concept called a “Nation.” But discussion of that would require some historical context to produce any useful intellectual (as opposed to emotional) exchanges.
Many see what we call “Nations” today as simply political aggregations (many of which are disintegrating – or never had integration as their basis to begin with). See, Africa in the “United Nations.” There, in Africa, even in the political units called Nations the peoples are not “united.”
People probably have a more easily defined right to reject identification of nationality, by migration, rebellion, and regional autonomies, than they have to “nationality” per se. But, does that not take us to that disastrous topic of “Self-Determination?”
As stated, it makes for an amorphous point of discussion.
OT
William F. Buckley has died.(Link)
I nominate his following quote for a Quote of the Day
Nice piece at Redstate(Link)
To be fair, while the concept of citizenship and nationhood have problems, whilst the world remains split between developed, developing and Third World, the requirement for individuals to hold citzenship will remain.
The best option we can hold to is competition between developed nations for our residency (if not citizenship). Taxation regimes to encourage entrepreneurs and attract foreign capital. Deregulation to attract multinationals.
The idea of open borders between developed nations is attractive, and the European Union is a model for freedom of movement of labour. Even North America would benefit from legal freedom of labour movement between all the members of NAFTA. Freedom of movement back fires only when it comes to welfare. If you exclude welfare access to non-citizens, you prevent welfare refugees.
Perhaps the best thing the West can do to promote deregulation, law and order and development in developing and Third World states is to actively steal their professionals and businessmen, until the rulers of those lands realise that the only way forward is secure property rights, low taxation, small government.
Who cares about democracy when the choices in these states are tyrants, kleptocrats and incompetents. Democracy and the open society don’t have to go hand in hand. What does democracy matter when all the state does is operate the police, courts, defence and borders and citizens are free to leave if they want to?
Nope x 5. By fluid severalty I mean things like people transacting as individuals in various ways, such as trading their own property or services in an often stateless environment over the internet and often apart from even the voluntary collective of companies. People trading on eBay for example. And if eBay becomes less attractive, quickly migrating to another network. P2P networks are another example of a way fluid severalty can be enabled.
Another threat worth mentioning is seaborne piracy; it remains a serious problem in parts of the world, such as SE Asia.
Perry de Havilland:
Um… yes, but how exactly are these transactions supposed to be any less susceptible to regulation, taxation, or any other sort of governmental interference than the old-fashioned ones? I’ve been hearing about these supposed future liberating effects of the internet for many years, but I fail to see any of them in practice, and in fact, it seems to me that migration of people’s transactions into cyberspace is making their surveillance and control only easier for the government – and I do have technical expertise in the area, so I think my impressions can’t be completely mistaken. I’d really like to hear some concrete arguments to the contrary.
You rather miss the point, Ivan (mostly because I have not laid it out at any length, I grant you).
Even if the state can monitor and tax such things effectively (a big ‘if’), that actually changes very little.
The fact people can get a cheap computer and a cheap broadband connection means doing business with people in (say) Indonesia to secure some service (as I was doing earlier today) becomes almost trivially easy. The ability to truly regulate sort of thing is going to be vary hard but more importantly, it opens up a range of social and economic contact to people waaaaay down the economic food chain and THAT will have profound long term impact on how people see a lot of things. In short, it makes entrepreneurship and active capitalism a whole lot more accessible to a whole lot more people.
So… forgive me for missing the points. But I must admit to some denseness. I do not believe that a pan-global nation/UFP/Utopia is workable; not without a massive change of culture and sense of identity.
Historically speaking, any government/institution only works when the people acquiesce. And that usually works when everybody shares a single, overarching culture. Either that, or overwhelming military presence. Empires like those of the Romans, for instance, shared both characteristics. The Chinese Empire, however, was more about a homogenous culture (after the first few centuries, when it was all about military power).
I believe the United States is the only Empire that is trying to hold together without the use of military forces internally, and even then there was a civil war and the whole thing might yet split apart with the inclusion of illegal trespassers who do not assume the greater culture of Americans.
Further, the power to transact foreign policies have traditionally been arrogated by sovereign nations. Nor do all have the same style of governance. And even with cyberspace, we operate within an environment limited by physical and geographical realities. Such as food production, blast it.
Quite frankly, I see this happening only when people voluntarily accept a global culture, with no penalties levied based on place of origin on any privilege, right or law, and the institution of equality of opportunity. I do not see this happening within the next century or millennium, for that matter.
But it is possible I missed the point entirely.
Agreed. But then that would just be trying to replace many states with one state.
However that is what I think is under way.
Gregory:
Do you not see this happening as we speak?
That is a conclusion but hardly the logical one.
You need to qualify that rather more for it to really tell me anything.
Good luck with that.
Perry de Havilland:
Thanks for the clarification; I mostly agree with you about these particular points, although I don’t share your overall optimistic conclusions. The question is which trends will ultimately prevail in the medium to long run. These ones you’re describing are IMO only one part of the whole picture, but that’s a very broad topic…
Dear Perry and Alisa;
No, I do not. Superficially, maybe. Americanisation of the world is taking place, so to speak.
However, for any community to adhere together, a sense of shared values must occur. It could be a system of governance. Maybe a religion. Or a financial system. You don’t even need a ‘them’, just an ‘us’. For instance, if *everyone* was a voluntary socialist, that system would work. No doubt.
I really don’t see unification on any of those issues, do you? Instead, what you more or less have is a series of checks and balances that ensure the gyroscope doesn’t stop spinning. And there are people who are actively trying to make it stop.
Gregory, I do not see it as ‘Americanization’ at all! It is cosmopolitanization and if you think America culture is cosmopolitan, methinks you have only ever been to New York. America assimilates rather than cosmopolitanises (although it can lend itself to that too better than some).
People do not need to stop being English or Malaysian or Croatian in order to be cosmopolitan, they just have to be tolerant and have aspirations for the things other people do better (or at least more interesting), and THAT makes living together in a community a whole lot easier that just being English or Malaysian or Croatian. Consmopilitanism means not just being English or Malaysian or Croatian.
Gregory, another point:
You may be making a mistake of defining community through physical boundaries, such as geography.
Dear Perry and Alisa;
Well, as to the first point, maybe. I just think that through American shows (radio/TV/whatever), American products and American hegemony, superficially American ‘cultural traits’ are seeping through to everyone. That was more or less what I was talking about. Regretfully, I have yet to set foot on US soil. My brother, the lucky sod, got to visit Las Vegas (and I daresay that was cosmopolitan enough :))
As for defining community through physical boundaries… well, maybe too. You can have Internet communities, for instance. Or the older version of ‘pen pals’ and ham radio enthusiasts. I understand that CB radios were the rage in the 70s. Trucker communities spanned continents, so this I know. However, in all of these, something common to all bound them together, a sense that they were part of something shared.
It is this sense that I do not see becoming homogenised. I imagine my views on citizen ID and those of Perry’s are [ahem] miles apart. There are more extreme people out there who are more… em, violent, in showing their contempt for those who are not of their thinking. This leads to trouble.