The replies of E. H. B. and V. LL. Havens to my letter of Sept. 6, regarding fingerprinting, seem to be based upon a misconception. I am not objecting to voluntary fingerprinting for purposes of identification. That is available to every one at the present time. What I am objecting to is compulsory fingerprinting by government officials.
The writers of these letters seem to assume that there is no harm in forcing people to do things which are thought to be for their own benefit. That is just where the difference of opinion comes in. To force people to do things under the plea that it is for their own benefit is paternalism; and paternalism ought to be hated with a perfect hatred by every real American.
Such paternalism is gradually tightening its grip on the American people. At every individual step in this direction all sorts of plausible arguments are advanced. “Is not this or that beneficial?” we are asked. “What harm can there be, then, in having government do it and in forcing every one to submit to that which is for his own good?” Thus the whole of life is gradually being placed under bureaucratic control.
In this extension of bureaucratic control the climax would be reached by the proposed establishment of a system of compulsory registration. That system—though not, indeed, in this particularly odious form of an actual seizure of the bodies of the citizens for purposes of fingerprinting—was well known in Europe before the war. We Americans then had a horror of it, and we regarded our citizenship in a country to which it was profoundly abhorrent as our dearest earthly possession. That possession will now be taken from us if Senator Copeland’s proposal is adopted.
The proposed measure, together with all similar bureaucratic measures, is being advocated as though in the interests of the stability of the State. Will it not knit the people together; will it not insure an orderly life? As a matter of fact, experience shows that in the long run it will have exactly the opposite effect, as it has had, for example, in Germany. A nation is the more stable the looser its control is over individual lives. The reason is that the life of any country depends ultimately upon the moral quality of its individual citizens. Bureaucracy, with its narrowing of the area of individual choice, destroys moral fiber; it is liberty which is really stable in the long run.
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