Althouse: Mark-of-the-beast tag for school kids.

January 9, 2013

Mark-of-the-beast tag for school kids.

"Plaintiff's objection to wearing the Smart ID badge without a chip is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."

19 comments:

Smilin' Jack said...: "Plaintiff's objection to wearing the Smart ID badge without a chip is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."

In other words, only crazy people have rights.; 1/9/13, 6:05 PM
jimbino said...: Would it be a "secular choice" not to wear a yarmulke or crucifix? Or to participate in a "moment of silence."

Everything a public education system does is religious compulsion: prayers, pledges, and moments of silence.; 1/9/13, 6:16 PM
bagoh20 said...: I wonder if an alarm goes off if the tags get to close together.

Remember "Total Recall" when Schwarzenegger puts his tracking device on a rat and lets his pursuers chase it. This could result in great pranks.; 1/9/13, 6:19 PM
bagoh20 said...: I don't get why refusing the non-chip version somehow makes it a secular choice, but the chip one might be religious grounds.; 1/9/13, 6:21 PM
traditionalguy said...: It's no more than the system for imported dogs into the Hawaian Islands since 1997.

They want their livestock round up able.

The mark of the beast is only a digital credit and debit system replacing currency in all buying and selling, which will be the Obama's Boys greatest achievement coming soon.; 1/9/13, 6:26 PM
edutcher said...: I would have had a problem with school knowing where I was every second.

jimbino said...

Would it be a "secular choice" not to wear a yarmulke or crucifix? Or to participate in a "moment of silence."

Everything a public education system does is religious compulsion: prayers, pledges, and moments of silence.

Riiiight.

Herstory, Black history, Gay history, etc.; 1/9/13, 6:26 PM
jimbino said...: Would it be a "secular choice" not to wear a yarmulke or crucifix? Or to participate in a "moment of silence."

Everything a public education system does is religious compulsion: prayers, pledges, and moments of silence, etc.; 1/9/13, 6:32 PM
mariner said...: jimbino,

And diversity, and global warming, and "fairness" ...; 1/9/13, 6:38 PM
Revenant said...: It annoys me that it matters if it is a secular choice or not.

So if the voices in your head tell you that Satan is using the tag to track your children, you don't have to tag them. But if your moral intelligence tells you that tagging your children is a fundamental violation of their basic human right to privacy, well, shut the fuck up, citizen. Tag them kids.

It is a sad state of affairs when the only legitimate basis for opting out of an oppressive government policy is the possession of fundamentally crazy reasons for wanting to.; 1/9/13, 6:42 PM
Phil 314 said...: There was time in the ACLU would've taken this case.; 1/9/13, 7:23 PM
Phil 314 said...: Help me out here Professor. Isn't the burden on the school as to why they MUST track this particular student? Does it make any difference why they (the students parents ) object?; 1/9/13, 7:27 PM
Anonymous said...: Here's why they need to be tracked. At mu inner city school (and others' I've been told) students just get up and walk out of class whenever they want. Or don't come to class and just roam the campus or even leave the campus. I'm 60 years old. I can't chase them down. Wouldn't put my hands on them anyways if I caught them as that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. So last week a parent shows up to get their child who had skipped class and was wandering the building. No one knew where she was. We went on lockdown to find her. If her ID was radio chipped we may have been able to locate her before locking down and calling in the authorities. But, that's only if they wear or carry their ID. If they don't it's all a moot point anyways.; 1/9/13, 8:00 PM
raf said...: But, that's only if they wear or carry their ID. If they don't it's all a moot point anyways.

This. They are tracking the badge, not the student. Once attendance figures are taken from counts of badges (you know it'll happen) the incentive for making sure students actually wear their badges (rather than leaving them at school or having a friend take it with them to school) will diminish. People always (always) game the system.; 1/10/13, 11:34 AM
Strelnikov said...: Every man shall be known by his RFID#, and th enumber of the Beast shall be 294856jBEWX128.; 1/10/13, 2:34 PM
Strelnikov said...: "Plaintiff's objection to wearing the Yellow Star is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."; 1/10/13, 2:35 PM
Strelnikov said...: "Plaintiff's objection to wearing the 'I (heart) Obama' is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."; 1/10/13, 2:36 PM
Strelnikov said...: "I wonder if an alarm goes off if the tags get to close together."

If they continue to come together in a rhythmic fashion for more than 30 seconds, they do go off.; 1/10/13, 2:38 PM
Strelnikov said...: "But, that's only if they wear or carry their ID. If they don't it's all a moot point anyways."

You miss the big point: I don't care how efficient it is or if in a given case it's helpful. I don't want a government agency tracking me or my family members for any purpose. Once you start down the "if it only helps one child.." slope, nothing is taboo. Biden said basically the same thing yesterday regarding the upcoming Presidential Order Gun Grab.; 1/10/13, 2:41 PM
Seerak said...: It annoys me that it matters if it is a secular choice or not.

It's the result of a deliberately literal, concrete-bound reading of the Constitution in lieu of grasping the underlying principles.

The "establishment clause" refers specifically to religion, on account of the fact that all matters of ideas were dealt with in the context of religion those days. The principle it embodies, however, is that the government shall not establish any official *ideas* -- that the government is not to discriminate against people on the basis of their ideas.

It's freedom of *thought*, not merely freedom of religion.

Instead, because current thinking about the Contitution is bound up in brain dead literal interpretations, the word "religion" in the First is taken literally, resulting in the government discriminating between different ideas, declaring only some of them to be worthy of legal respect -- precisely what the Founders sought to prevent.

When you hear those religious conservatives going on about "freedom of religion" not meaning "freedom FROM religion", it is precisely this same willful epistemological primitivism they are exploiting.; 1/10/13, 11:16 PM