All of these things about REAL ID are true, though they would apply just as much even in the absence of the REAL ID Act. Over the past few decades government has expanded dramatically and of course it wants you to be identified to it. A side effect of this has been that more and more private entities are asking for government ID when they have little or no reason to do so. Part of this is government mandate, for instance, carding people for alcohol and tobacco.

But the Rubicon was crossed when government made the driver license a form of identification. It originally was not; decades passed before any state made a driver license a form of identification. And since in the modern world virtually everyone must drive, or at least travel, virtually everyone gets a driver license, which also happens to be a form of identification.

Thus it is considered unusual to bordering on suspicious if someone does not have one, and someone not carrying identification these days should expect to be harassed at some point by the so-called “authorities.”

This of course gets worse with REAL ID, with the feds butting their nose in and telling the states what to do, and then deciding what states’ IDs they will accept — and then require — for any aspect of your life. But we were headed this way anyway; if it wasn’t REAL ID, it would have been something else.