Illegalizing illegals.(on the right)(illegals' right to driver's license)

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 2

THE shooting war in New York over the question of driver's licenses for illegal aliens dramatizes several features of U.S. culture. The first of these is that the right to drive a car is the most cherished right in America, of special, sizzling importance to young people.

It is easy to understand why. Driving a car is a sign of arrival at maturity. In my own history I remember struggling over the matter of residence. My parents had two homes, one in Connecticut and one in South Carolina. In Connecticut, the age for a driver's license was the orthodox 16. Young residents of the state were easily identifiable as making up the throng who arrived at the Department of Motor Vehicles one day after their 16th birthday, to let not one more minute pass before their blooding as independent Americans. But if I had been officially a South Carolinian, I'd have been able to drive at age 13. There was left over the problem of handling one's parents.

It crept into civil consciousness that the suspension of the right to drive was a huge weapon. Bill Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas some seasons back, caused a furor when he announced that he had a weapon he was prepared to use against teenagers who didn't complete high school: no driver's license. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has more recently proposed deploying that final leverage, and research advises that as many as 18 states are experimenting with limiting the right to drive as a means of affecting behavior.

Other considerations than children's hysterical appetites have come into sight, notably those of illegal immigration and national security. We learn that the 19 people who engineered 9/11 had among them a collection of 63 driver's licenses. Were these critical enablers? After all, you don't need a driver's license to slash a pilot's throat. But you do need a driver's license, or a passport, to board the plane in the first place, and so the security people became ...