The Soviet Republic Of America

By Semperpapa

I remember the old days. It was the 1970s and I was still in my country of birth. The Soviet Union was still a great scary power for everyone in Europe and in Italy, just as the rest of the old continent, Communist Parties were powerful.

In my very frequent “discussions” with friends who believed in the Soviet ideology, I would often ask the question: but if you think that the life style in that country is so great, why don’t you just move there?

The question would always basically end the conversation, because even the most persistent believers were not that stupid. Nobody in the right state of mind would move from a free society to a close system where people were not even allowed to go outside the Soviet borders.

In those old days, just about every international sport event was characterized by some soviet athlete, or from one of the satellite nations behind the Iron Curtain, who would just walk away from its guardians and ask for political asylum.

Weather it was the Olympic Games or an international Soccer match, one could almost bet on a defection.

But why would members of such wonderful utopian political systems want to defect and never be able to go back to their lands? I never could get a straight answer from the “communist” I would question.

The truth every one of them was not willing to face up to was that the countries in question, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungry, Poland, Cuba, East Germany etc., did not allow their citizens to freely leave the borders of those nations. The reason was that those regimes knew that once out, the majority would not want to go back.

To be allowed to leave the country, one had to be part of the regimes and have specific state reasons for doing so. The grim reality, which we still see in countries like North Korea and Cuba, is that the citizens are prisoners of the system.

Which brings me to our beloved country.

The State Department, the Obama and Hillary State Department, is proposing a new application for the US passport. They claim that the new sludge of questions is needed for those who do not have proper documentation like birth certificate or similar.

The proposed application contains questions like these:

List your mother’s one year before your birth.

List your mother’s residence when you were born.

List your mother’s residence a year after your birth.

Did your mother receive pre-natal care.

If yes, name of the doctor.

Dates of appointments.

This is not a joke, at least not intended to be!

There is also a “volunteer” questionnaire in which one of the questions asks if you are circumcised.

Besides the travesty of the fact that some government worker whose salary I am paying, actually came up with this crap (most likely was a whole “task force” to compile such a pile of manure), such level of scrutiny is way out in the stratosphere on so many levels.

In the first place, the US Passport is a very important identification document. After I got my US citizenship, I received a document that I was warned at the time, I had to literally guard with my life. It was the Certificate of Naturalization, an accompanying document of the famous green card, the proof that I was legally allowed to live and work in the United States. The day I applied for my US Passport, I had to relinquish those two documents, because just having a passport issued to me was proof enough that I was a US citizen.

That is the importance of the passport. So when I read that the excuse for the enhanced questioning is so that the document can be issued to those who do not have proper proof of having been born in the United States, I highly question the motives of the government.

Than there is the other side of the coin. Many of the proposed questions are practically impossible to answer. I challenge every one to be able to remember, or even know, the address of their mother a year prior to their birth, unless it was their childhood residence. Even less plausible is the possibility that a person could know the name of the doctor who attended to their mother during the pregnancy and the dates of the visits. They are impossible questions to answer.

Which brings up a legitimate question for the jokers at State: why ask questions that 99.99% of the applicants could not answer? Is the State Department trying to create a hostile environment for those who would like to have a passport? And if so, why?

Incomplete questionnaires would allow the authorities the ability to deny the document to many who apply for it, and this is very reminiscing of the old Soviet Union days. What is next? Having to show an ID to go from California to Arizona?

It is amazing that authorities are not allowed to question potential illegal aliens as they invade our borders, but the government feels it has the right to know if I have been circumcised or how many times a woman went to the doctor while pregnant.

Maybe we should all run for President for the Democratic Party, as that seems to be the only way that proof of citizenship is no longer a requirement.

Just my thoughts!