Where fear rules

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views April 8, 2002]

William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, comments on a February 22 Washington Times story that describes police officers patrolling the halls of public schools in Texas. The policemen are giving out tickets to students, just as they do to traffic violators. For example, a 15-year-old boy, who was heard cursing at another student, was given a ticket and fined $300, which his parents are expected to pay.

Last year, in one school district, police issued 132 tickets to students for disrupting classes and 182 tickets for disorderly conduct. Lind observes:

Whatever happened to being sent to the principal's office? Or detention? Or simple common sense? If a schoolboy uses a bad word, state troopers stationed inside his school now ticket his parents? Why do we, the public, put up with this sort of totalitarian nonsense?

Our ancestors, who evidently had more guts than we do, would have solved this problem with tar, feathers, and a rail. We meekly allow ourselves to be dragged through every absurdity, not even protesting. Since we have decided to behave like sheep, we should not be surprised that we get fleeced, then slaughtered.

Lind then explains some of the factors that lie behind these bizarre policies--schoolteachers who have been stripped of authority and now fear violating a myriad of rules; parents too scared to challenge school policies whenever "security" is used to justify them; and political correctness that conditions young and old to watch their words and thoughts.

Finally, most Americans seem to accept without question that the state can do anything to us it wants. Here too we have been conditioned, by one absurd law after another: by tax forms that are incomprehensible but must be filled out accurately, by "wetlands" legislation that keeps farmers from plowing and builders from building, by "asset forfeiture" laws that allow the state to seize your property without a conviction or even a trial. We have accepted so much that we cannot draw the line anywhere.

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