As a teenage baseball pitcher I had a pretty good fast ball, and liked to throw everything hard. But my curve ball just wasn’t working. Then I got a physics lesson from my coach. “Son, ” he said, “you can either get speed on the ball or spin. But not both.”
He was right of course. The more spin you put on the ball, the more it will curve. With less spin, the ball will go straighter, and faster. Watch the “jugs” gun at a professional baseball game. A good pitcher throws a 95 mph fast ball, but his curve ball will come in at about 80 mph.
I think of that lesson whenever a news story reveals the trade-off between security and freedom.
Conservative Americans tend to guard their anonymity. They don’t think the government has any right to know a lot of details about their lives. Many just don’t trust the government to keep our information confidential, and recent examples of sloppy data security and failure to prevent hacking would seem to support that skepticism.
Others worry that corrupt government officials might actually use personal data to harm us for political purposes. Again, there is recent evidence that this kind of stuff happens; the IRS has become a weapon of personal destruction. It’s not hard to see why many Americans would prefer to be invisible to their own government.
But many of the same people who want to fly beneath the government’s radar also demand that the government provide us optimum security, which would require the feds to know a lot about everybody who is inside our borders. Here’s the hard truth: you can have security or anonymity, but not both. Speed or spin.
The United States has a serious problem with immigration in all varieties: legal, illegal, and refugee. Unskilled and under-educated illegals, mostly Mexicans, flow across our southern border, wreaking havoc here that would not be tolerated in their home country. USA Today reported this week that 76% of immigrant families with children are on welfare. Media sources say about 30% of inmates in our federal prisons are illegal immigrants, but that number is based on “self-reported” immigration status by prisoners and is likely much higher. Criminals who are illegal immigrants are routinely released by law officers in our sanctuary cities. Illegal immigrants have made a multi-billion dollar industry out of tax fraud – the IRS is totally indifferent to the outrageous refunds they receive, using fake tax returns and fake social security numbers.
Immigrants who are legally admitted to the US with temporary visas for work, education, or other purposes, often overstay their visas or take up permanent residence. Vote fraud by citizens and non-citizens alike is a growing problem, largely due to the failure of precincts to prove that voters are legitimate. Identity theft losses continue to accelerate.
Homeland Security, ICE, and the other federal agencies all say there is nothing they can do about any of these problems because they just can’t keep track of everybody.
Well, people, it’s time. It’s time for all legal American citizens to have a micro-chipped USA identification card, and the federal government must update its technology to be able to identify every human being within our borders. Our government should collect DNA, retinal scans, palm scans, or any other physical individual identification from everybody who lives here, visits here, or is discovered to have arrived here. The technology is readily available, and the cost should be more than offset by savings.
Scary? Yes.
But so is the reality of thousands of Muslim refugees arriving on our shores unvetted at a time when Iran is on the verge of receiving $150 billion and a free pass to build nuclear weapons which it will share with its aligned Muslim terrorist groups from all over the Middle East. So is the prospect of a US economy crushed under the weight of an exploding population of needy, unskilled third-world immigrants and refugees, reproducing at a much greater rate than native-born Americans. So is the loss of our national identity, our character, our traditions, our heritage, and our sense of unity, as American-born citizens become outnumbered by foreigners who don’t speak the same language, don’t understand our unique system of government, don’t recognize our laws, and don’t intend to assimilate into our common culture.
It may be hard to trust the government after what we have been through the last several years. Under the circumstances we have no choice but to trust, and we’d better be careful who we put in power. I don’t see how we will ever get this hot mess back under control until we know who is who.
Speed or spin. Security or anonymity. Time to make up our minds.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
And pick up on one and leave the other behind?
It’s not often easy and not often kind.
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind? – the Lovin’ Spoonful
Mark Roberts, graying but still athletic in his crisp suit and tie, stood in the center of his circle of 15 students. Every eye was on the articulate and energetic instructor as he probed their understanding of the character in their literature assignment, 
Tom Balek - Rockin' On The Right Side 