american driver’s licenses…

check your american driver’s license.  does it say USA or America or United States or United States of America anywhere?  my california and virginia licenses don’t.

i’m very delayed in writing about this but when we lived in europe, michael, the kids and i were traveling to austria by car.  we hit the croatian/slovenian border as we’d done many times.  we finally met a guy who was either really vigilant in his job or just didn’t like the look of us.  after he’s looked over our passports, he asked michael for his driver’s license.  he only had his virginia license which he presented.  the guy was unimpressed.  he flipped it over and back and said what is this…it means nothing to me!  where is this even from??  michael said the US and he said how would i know, it doesn’t say that anywhere on the license!  until that time, neither michael nor i realized that.  after giving us an extremely hard time he let us pass with the admonition to get a croatian license!

i know, i know…state’s rights and blah, blah, blah.  whatever!  how can you NOT have the country of origin on your license?  sure, most everyone knows of california or new york and where they’re located but do they know of wisconsin, or nebraska?

and while i’m on the subject…what is so wrong about having a national ID card or a universal driver’s license?  does that mean big brother will suddenly begin surveillance on my house or keep track of my phone calls?  no…besides, they do some pretty rotten things in the name of “patriotism” or “freedom” these days.  (have you heard of the patriot act?)

i think the states’ righters or whatever you want to call them just have a bee in their ass.  nothing is going to happen if all of our driver’s licenses look the same.  the world won’t implode.  i guess it’s that old slippery slope thing that conservative states’ righters like to trot out.  blah, blah.  get over it.  that’s the kind of shit that keeps our country perpetually in disarray.