My wife who is from a large mainland European country, has an ID card. Everyone has one and they're mandatory. It makes it trivial to prove your bona fides and is good for air travel within the Schengen area. Her ID even has a chip which can be used to create digital signatures for situations where rock-solid proof of identity is required.

Amazingly, they've always had ID cards and the world hasn't ended. These countries are in some ways freer and more democratic than the UK.

'Civil libertarianism' has become a self-licking ice cream cone, and their advocacy is not only shrill and counterproductive, but also enables common criminals and bad geopolitical actors, engaging in aggressive hybrid war against free countries.

One of the few ways we are going to be able to fight off the Russian and Chinese hybrid war aggression that is assailing the West online is to hold online commenters accountable by binding their online identities to real-world strong IDs.

The libertarians may not like it, but this is the direction the world is going. Strong ID is a common sense, tried-and-true approach to protecting ourselves against criminals and foreign aggressors. And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.

Counterpoint...the UK government is already jailing people for voicing opinions they don't like. You are basically saying that this is OK by you. This can be abused very badly by bad actors in the government. It is also one of the things we criticize China for. Becoming like an authoritarian system isn't the solution for opposing authoritarian systems.

> And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.

Using "boot licker" as some sort of insult on moderates is getting really old. I appreciate the alternative term though.