Dear Editor:

Neal Wagner’s Jan. 8 story on STAR ID card is a reminder of how easy it is to miss what is happening to us in this age of declining personal liberties. Government is imposing its draconian will at such an astonishing pace that is impossible to keep up.

Requiring ordinary Americans to show a special ID to board an airliner is bad enough. As frightening is the requirement to give ever more personal information, including one’s Social Security number, to low-level bureaucrats at the driver’s license office.

The new ID law fits well in the airport screening model, a solution in search of a problem that cons people into thinking they are being protected but which accomplishes nothing. Charles Krauthammer explained this in a Nov. 19, 2010, Washington Post column when he wrote that “the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known.”

We can profile, as Israel does without a single high-jacking, or we can pretend. By staying silent and doing nothing to push back, Americans seem willing to pretend. It’s the easy way.

Stephen Combs

Pelham