The surreal fraud of the matricula consular

The Kakfkaesque saga of the matricula consular continues. These cards, which are issued by the Mexican government to Mexican nationals in the United States and then accepted as “valid ID” by U.S. authorities, are finally coming under some official scrutiny. Yet the scrutiny fails to grasp the real issue. According to the Orange County Register:

Although the FBI is questioning the reliability of Mexican identification cards and says they could post a threat to national security, local law enforcement officials continue to support them, and the Mexican government has no plans to stop issuing them. A top FBI official this week told Congress that the FBI believes the cards are ripe for fraud and could fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.

But of course, to question the “reliability” of these cards completely misses the point. Even if such a card were 100 percent “reliable,” the only thing it reliably establishes is that the bearer is a Mexican citizen. The card does not show that the person is a legal U.S. resident. Indeed, if he were a legal U.S. resident, he obviously wouldn’t need the Mexican consular card because he would have valid U.S. green card. So, by accepting the consular card as a “valid ID,” we’re simply accepting as legally present in this country a person who, we know, is not legally present in this country. Why then bother with the farce of the cards at all? Since the cards are already a fraud, why be concerned about whether they’re being used fraudulently?

Imagine that a man were stopped by a policeman in the process of burglarizing a house, and the burglar then shows the officer an ID card indicating that he lives at a certain address on the other side of town. On ascertaining that the card is a “valid ID,” the officer then … politely says goodbye to the burglar and walks away, leaving him free to continue burglarizing the house. That’s what these consular cards are.

In order to understand how we’ve reached this point, think of it in terms of a devolution from traditional society to liberal society to postmodern liberal society. Traditional society represents the truth of its existence—its political, constitutional, religious, moral, cultural, racial truth—by means of a whole range of symbols. Liberalism then comes along and progressively strips the society of its substantive truths, while maintaining their outward, formal symbols. Thus the substance of marriage is transformed more and more into an at-will contract, while the name and outward form and symbolic prestige of marriage are maintained. Thus the nation is transformed more and more into a multicultural, racial-socialist system, while still calling iself a nation. By maintaining their respective symbols, the society and its institutions maintain themselves in existence, though in increasingly attenuated form. But that’s not the end of the story. Under postmodern liberalism, the substance of the society becomes so hollowed out that the outward symbols cease even to claim to represent the missing substance. The symbols of the nation become nothing more than ironic gestures. And that’s what America’s official recognition of the matricula consular really means: it is an ironic gesture signaling the death of our nation.

Something similar can be seen in the affirmative action area. Up to the Grutter v. Bollinger decision this past week, the society still energetically maintained the idea (harder and harder though it was to believe) that we have equality under the law. The phrase “equality under the law,” a prime verbal symbol of America, still had some force and effect. But now, with racial proportionality being openly affirmed by the Supreme Court as a part of our Constitution, equality under the law really is gone. Yet the system must nevertheless maintain the outward form of equality under the law in order to preserve any color of legitimacy. So the Supreme Court declares that a mere transparent figleaf of race neutrality (“individualized” consideration, a “sensitive, holistic” examination of each appliciant) is sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements of equality under the law. Yet this is not believed any more, even by those saying it. Their saying it is a postmodern gesture designed to maintain the viability of a liberal system that liberalism itself has emptied of all its former content and transformed into the opposite of what it once was.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2003 01:28 PM | Send