I want to begin with a simple question.
Do we, as human beings, possess the right to travel freely, or must we first obtain permission from government?
Before we discuss license plates, registration fees, or traffic laws, we must answer that question. Because everything else depends upon it.
Our nation was founded upon the understanding that our rights come from our Creator, not from government.
The Declaration of Independence declares that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted to secure those rights.
Not to create them. Not to grant them. And certainly not to sell them back to us through licenses, permits, and annual fees.
Government was established to protect our liberty, not to become the authority from which we must obtain it.
The right to travel is inseparable from the right to live freely.
Think about what travel actually means in our everyday lives.
A father drives to work to provide for his children. A mother takes her children to school. A family travels to church to worship God. An elderly couple drives to the grocery store for food. A son travels across the state to visit his aging parents.
These are not privileges or special activities requiring extraordinary permission. They are the ordinary necessities of life and cherished liberty.
And yet, today, the government claims the authority to prohibit these peaceful activities unless we first get permission from them.
We are told that we still have the right to travel. “You can walk”. ICSO Deputy J. Ford
But what does that mean to a father whose family lives 100 miles away? What does it mean to a mother whose children's school is 20 miles from home? What does it mean to someone living in rural America where the nearest grocery store may be an hour's drive away?
A right that exists only when government permits its exercise is not liberty.
Our forefathers traveled by foot, horseback, wagon, and carriage. Today, we travel by automobile.
The means have changed. The right has not.
The invention of the automobile did not extinguish our God-given right to travel.
Neither did the invention of the license plate.
Public Roads Were Established for the People
Public roads exist for public passage. That is their purpose.
Long before modern transportation departments, people established roads and rights-of-way so they could move freely between their homes, farms, communities, and places of business.
Government may maintain these roads, repair them, and establish reasonable rules to protect those who use them.
But maintaining a road does not give government ownership of the people's liberty to travel upon it.
Consider a public sidewalk. Government may construct and maintain it. It may prohibit someone from blocking it or endangering others upon it.
But would that give government the moral authority to require every pedestrian to obtain an annual walking permit?
Of course not.
Why? Because the sidewalk exists to facilitate a liberty the person already possesses.
The roads serve the people. The people do not exist to serve the roads or the government agents that maintains them.
The Argument of Public Safety
We are told that vehicle registration is necessary for public safety.
But what exactly does registration make safer?
Does a registration sticker improve a vehicle's brakes? Does it make the tires safer? Does it make the driver more responsible? Does it stop a person from driving intoxicated.
No!
Registration primarily allows government agents to identify a vehicle and connect it to an ownership record.
That can be useful. It can help recover stolen vehicles and identify those involved in crimes or collisions.
I do not dispute those legitimate purposes.
But I do dispute the assumption that accomplishing them requires making peaceful travel dependent upon government permission.
Every modern automobile already has a unique vehicle identification number. Permanent identification could be established when a vehicle is manufactured or titled, without requiring annual authorization to use it.
There are practical alternatives worth considering.
And even if registration makes some investigations easier, we must ask a deeper question.
Since when did making government's work easier become sufficient justification for restricting an inherent human liberty?
Imagine government requiring every citizen to carry a digital identification chip whenever leaving home. Officers could more easily identify suspects, locate wanted persons, and investigate crimes.
Would that make some law-enforcement activities easier?
Certainly!
But would that alone justify requiring every peaceful person to carry a digital government identification chip simply to leave home?
If administrative convenience is sufficient justification to restrict liberty, where does that authority end?
Public safety is important. But safety cannot become a limitless justification for government control.
Otherwise, nearly every liberty could be restricted by pointing to some possible danger.
Freedom requires something more than the government's assertion that a restriction might be useful.
When a Right Becomes a Privilege
This is where the danger becomes especially serious.
A right does not have to be formally abolished for people to lose the practical ability to exercise it.
It can be restricted gradually, through requirements that appear reasonable when considered individually.
First, government requires identification. Then registration. Then annual renewal. Then payment of additional fees and so on.
Eventually, a person is prohibited from using his own vehicle on public roads unless every requirement has been satisfied.
And what happens when he does not comply?
He can be stopped. His vehicle can be impounded. Under certain circumstances, he can be arrested.
Think about that.
A man may be traveling peacefully to visit his family. He may be obeying every rule of safe driving. He may have harmed no one and threatened no one.
Yet the government can use force against him because he has not complied with its registration requirements, or in other words, because he did not get permission from government agents to drive his own vehicle.
The government may have a statute authorizing that force.
But a statute does not, by its mere existence, establish that the force is morally justified.
There is a profound difference between what government has declared lawful and what is inherently right.
Our nation's founders understood that distinction.
They did not declare that government possesses all rights and distributes them to obedient citizens.
They declared that people already possess rights, and that government exists to secure them.
When the exercise of an inherent right becomes dependent upon government approval, the right risks becoming a privilege in practice, regardless of what we continue to call it.
The Constitution Recognizes Rights. It Does Not Create Them.
Some will respond that the Supreme Court has upheld vehicle registration laws.
That is true.
The Court has recognized the fundamental constitutional right of interstate travel between states while also permitting states to impose reasonable vehicle registration requirements.
But that does not settle the moral question.
The Supreme Court did not create our right to travel, and its recognition of government regulatory authority does not mean that every exercise of that authority is just.
Our rights existed before the Constitution was written.
The Constitution was established to protect those rights by limiting government power.
The question before us is therefore larger than whether a registration statute has been upheld.
It is whether the government's power to regulate the highways has expanded beyond what is necessary to protect the rights of the people to freely travel.
What Kind of Society Are We Becoming?
Consider how much of ordinary life now depends upon government authorization.
Government agents require permission to build on our property. Permission to operate businesses. Permission to engage in certain occupations. Permission to use our own vehicles on public roads. Just to mention a few.
Each requirement comes with an explanation. Each is defended as necessary for safety, order, revenue, or the public good.
Some regulations may be justified. Others may not.
But when we consider them only one at a time, we risk overlooking the larger transformation.
We begin with a society in which people are presumed free unless they violate the rights of others.
We risk becoming a society in which people are presumed unauthorized until government grants permission.
That is a fundamental change in the relationship between the people and the state.
The first understanding begins with liberty.
The second begins with government control by force.
And the difference reaches far beyond vehicle registration.
Conclusion: The Right Comes First
I am not asking for the right to endanger others.
I am not asking that stolen vehicles go unidentified or that dangerous drivers escape accountability.
I am asking something much more fundamental.
Why should a peaceful person need government permission to travel in his own vehicle upon a public road?
If identification is necessary, let us identify vehicles without making travel dependent upon government permission.
If roads need maintenance, let us maintain them without confusing that responsibility with ownership of the people's liberty.
If someone endangers others, let government fulfill its legitimate responsibility to protect them.
But let us never forget the proper relationship between the people and their government.
Our rights do not come from the state.
Our liberty is not a government benefit.
And the peaceful exercise of an inherent right should not be treated as a crime merely because a person has not purchased permission to exercise it.
A free society is not one in which government permits its citizens to do certain things.
A free society is one in which people are at liberty to live their lives, and government must justify its interference with that liberty.
The right to travel belongs to each person.
It existed before government, before highways, and before automobiles.
And it must not be surrendered simply because government has found it convenient to regulate.
We do not travel by the grace of government, Thank God!