First, they came for the immigrants.

In October, 2000, if you had predicted a George W. Bush presidency would include the Vice President lobbying the Senate for the right to torture people, you would have been called an alarmist nutjob. If you had predicted the President, himself, would threaten to veto any legislation that curbed torture of prisoners by the US military, nobody on the right and few on the left would have taken you seriously.

Some things are just so far outside the parameters of what we believe it means to be American that they cannot even be considered. And yet they happen.

That’s ancient history, you say? Everything changed on 9/11, you insist?

Okay, then, let’s just go back one year. Back to June, 2005. It’s one of those into-the-wee-hours discussions. And you suggest “I can see the government requiring people to be implanted with microchips. Little chips, the size of a grain of rice. So small, you wouldn’t know it was there. Like the ones they put in dogs. It would identify you and contain all the information the government might want to know about you. It could even track you. I think it could happen.”

Do your friends confiscate your car keys and call a cab because you must be drunk? Do they all agree this is definitely the stuff of science fiction novels and nutty professors? Are they certain Americans would never stand for this?

Think again, my friend:

Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company’s RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.

Silverman was being interviewed on “Fox & Friends.” Responding to the Bush administration’s call to know “who is in our country and why they are here,” he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, “We have talked to many people in Washington about using it….”