I say this as someone who would strongly support a federal mandatory national ID system (and the ACLU, generally)
Oh, I doubt it's a left-right thing. I'm pretty lefty these days, and I oppose a national ID. Some minority groups, like say Jewish folks, might carry bad connotations about putting everybody in a big database so we can keep track of (and categorize) them.
But, of course, there's not much preventing the local government from sharing the info with the Feds.
It's something so unlikely to come up in day-to-day interactions that it's not really that important. I'm sure if I got stopped in, say, France, and had no passport to show, they wouldn't exactly lock me up on the spot, they'd find a way to accommodate me.
I still only have a really vague understanding of what happens if a cop in the US wants me to identify myself and I refuse. If I'm not suspected of a crime, obviously, I can just walk away. I'm not really sure what I'd do if I was arrested for cause and refused to identify myself.
For amusement's sake, I really enjoy his videos on geography, such as (his first video ever) this one on the UK (which I guess might need updating soon?):
or this one on Scotland:
or my favorite geographical video, on the Vatican:
That said, they're all pretty great, so I'd just start with this list of all his videos in ascending order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&index=1&list=PLq...
Somewhat different, is the Hello Internet [2] podcast, which is by Grey and Brady Haran who you might know from the Numberphile youtube channel [3]. It's basically the 2 of them chatting about random stuff, but I find it very entertaining.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus