I had the pleasure of finding a real, honest to goodness, Labour voter yesterday – let’s call him Joe – first such person I’ve come across in a long time. “Labour all the way” he said. I physically squirmed at this.

As odd as it sounds, it was like having a conversation with myself – except me from 5 years ago. It all started when someone mentioned this blog. I said, “if you’re a lefty you probably won’t like it very much.”

“Why?” Joe replied. “Are you a bit of a fascist? Do you hate immigrants? Do you hate the poor?”

I choke on my burger at this point.

It wouldn’t be fair to describe Joe as typical Labour voter. His parents are highly regarded in the socialist movement, and when Joe went out looking for work, he was banned from working for the Liberal Democrats – work for Labour, he was told, or don’t work for a political party at all.

This conversation, then, takes place a few years after he’s been working in the belly of the beast. Curiously I find myself on the wrong end of what should be a very simple argument:

The only legitimate justification for the state to force an individual to do something is to prevent that individual harming another individual. Forcing an individual to carry an ID card does not prevent an individual harming another individual, therefore there is no legitimate moral basis to compel anyone to carry an ID card.

Simples!

Or is it? Because my interpretation of what is ‘moral’ for the state to do is not axiomatic – it is simply what I believe.When I say, “this is right, this is good” that’s really just me denoting my approval.

Joe suggested that the moral basis for ID cards is the same as that for taxation – that it’s a social contract. If you want to live in the UK then you automatically sign up to this social contract which means you pay the taxes required of you and you allow to Government to put you in a database so that you can prove who you are.

“It’s the Greater Good, isn’t it?” I offered.

“Exactly,” he replied.

Once again I came back to the basic principle that civil liberties are an inherent good (without really being able to explain why) and that compulsory ID cards invert the relationship between Governed and Government.

I realise I’m talking esoterically about philosophical attitudes, and that I have no deductively sound arguments in favour of  civil liberties as a defacto good in their own right, that Liberty itself, as a good thing, is not universally acknowledged.

At every point, “The Greater Good” and “The Social Contract” effect – the ‘if you want to live here, you play by our rules and you pay your dues’ remains a perfectly acceptable counter-argument.

So an article in the Guardian about an immigrant’s experience at the hands of this BNP voter pandering Government was music to my ears this morning (and written about in top quality fashion by Devil’s Kitchen)

Cory Doctorow asks his Grandmother why she left the Soviet Union:

“Papers,” she said, finally. “We had to carry papers. The police could stop you at any time and make you turn over your papers.” The floodgates opened. They spied on you. They made you spy on each other.

This sounds like a powerful argument in favour of being watchful about the surveillance powers of the State, doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t. Even now Joe can reply, “well, they didn’t agree to the Contract, so they left, what’s the problem? Everyone who didn’t care stayed. Most people didn’t care.”

Which means we’re back where we started, where ‘Democratic Mandate’ gives Government the power to do whatever it wants and it’s up to us to comply or leave – very Labour.

The question now is whether or not we can ever find a hard argument in favour of civil liberties as an inherent good, in much the same way that democracy is considered an inherent good – something that people accept by default. Until then, civil liberties are little more than a minor annoyance for legislators who wish such a concept did not exist.

Perhaps such an argument can never be found, but it strikes me that if we’re ever to limit the power of the state to interfere with civil liberties then this is an argument that needs to be won, that the concept of a ‘free nation’ is something that people should value and want to fight for as a rule, not as an exception.

UPDATE: IanB has had a go at this thorny problem here.

UPDATE: Counting Cats has a go as well…

UPDATE: Costigan Quist says ‘there’s no such thing as the social contract’

UPDATE: Jock Coats claims that Social Contract contradicts the concept of self ownership