Government's unbridled power

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views January 19, 2004]

It's no longer a secret that most citizens of the United States will give in to any government intrusions, if such intrusions are wrapped around the word "security." Today's American has little in common with earlier generations, who were raised to accept the unpleasant reality that an open society brings with it only degrees of safety, not total safety, in deference to protecting everyone's constitutional rights. Earlier generations understood that guaranteed security comes only in a totalitarian lockdown, where surveillance and severe punishment keep everyone anxiously in line.

Former Congressman Bob Barr, in his weekly columns, tells about the kind of country we're turning into. In "Pre-emptive strike hits high schools," he describes last November's jackbooted "drug raid" at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina:

The now widely reproduced black-and-white video shows police barging into the school with guns drawn and pointed at students. We see dozens of students lying prone in the school's hallways with armed officers clearly shouting at them to "get down and put your hands up" while searching vainly for the drugs that were the justification for the raid in the first place.

The good news is that no student was killed or injured by any quick-draw officer's accident or overreaction. The bad news is that the incident illustrates the degree to which America is now gripped by a climate of fear and overreaction. It also bears testimony to the unbridled power with which our society has clothed government, both local and national. . . .

Is nothing to be placed in rational perspective anymore? Is the term "measured response" no longer a part of our vocabulary? A police raid on a school, with guns drawn despite scant evidence, represents an effort to "be proactive" in creating a "safe environment" for students, in the words of the local school superintendent, Chester Floyd. One shudders to contemplate what a televised record of an "aggressive" approach would reveal. . . .

Oh, and by the way, when they're not testing students for drugs, alcohol, tobacco and, I suppose pretty soon, caffeine, school officials are disciplining kids for what they're saying to friends on their personal computers, after school hours and from their homes. Or, for what they write in their diaries.

Is it really any wonder that school officials -- empowered by parents to invade students' privacy to the extent of testing them for smoking cigarettes (whether on or off school property, and regardless of whether such horrible activity takes place during school hours or not), and reading their private e-mails after school hours -- feel they're within their rights to order a SWAT raid on students?

Copyright © 2008 Issues & Views