While shopping the other day, I was vaguely aware of two little girls playing nearby. They prattled happily until one of them evidently did something her playmate considered unseemly, and I heard a tiny voice warn, “You better stop doing that. The police are watching.”
Although I wasn’t looking at them, I could deduce that the other child was baffled, because her friend went on to explain that “they have cameras everywhere. They can see everything you do.”
So much for Santa Claus being the all-seeing judge of who’s being naughty or nice.
It was chilling to realize that those children, who didn’t look any older than 6, already had internalized the concept of living under Big Brother’s watchful eye. What does that bode for the future of our country?
One of the defining differences between authoritarian regimes and open societies is that free people are not routinely monitored by their government.
What sort of nation are we destined to become if the generation of children born after Sept. 11, 2001, grow up considering it normal to live under constant surveillance?
For today’s youngsters — particularly those living in Washington, D.C. — there is a disconnect between the rights they are supposedly guaranteed and what they actually experience.
Free people are entitled to go about their business without police interference unless there is probable cause to suspect they have committed a crime.
They do not have to produce identification upon the capricious demand of a police officer or submit to a search before entering public property. Until six years ago, that was understood in the United States. Today, it seems almost quaint.
Those of us old enough to have historical memory at least know enough to be outraged by what our society has become. Children who have never known anything different will have no such expectations. How can they be expected to grow up and defend freedoms they have never known?
Democrats in Congress are trying to rein in some of the post-9/11 infringements of civil liberties, but much more needs to be done than what seems to be on their agenda.
For instance, while it is crucial to limit the capacity for domestic spying in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that has no immediate impact on the nation’s 6-year-olds.
What informs their concept of normal life is having their Dora the Explorer backpacks searched before entering a Smithsonian museum. Today’s youngsters are taught that they cannot enjoy Fourth of July festivities on the National Mall until some gumshoe has rifled through the family’s picnic basket. Words such as “checkpoint” that were anathema to Americans only a few years ago are part of the vernacular today.
And how can children learn what constitutes reasonable precaution when they encounter so many so-called security practices that have no basis in reason?
For heaven’s sake: There is even a security checkpoint at the entrance of the Botanical Gardens now, presumably to screen for terrorists intent on blowing up … poinsettias.
Such absurdities don’t reflect a safer society; they represent a growth of bureaucratic power that Congress ought to rein in. Yet executive police forces operate with virtually no legislative oversight.
Even worse, when a practice has the imprimatur of the federal government, local governments and private businesses often follow suit. Consequently, just to enter a sporting event or an amusement park now requires waiting in line for someone to take a perfunctory glance inside your bag.
Because the federal government wastes billions of dollars every year conducting background checks for employees filling nonsensitive positions, private businesses feel free to do the same.
How will today’s children ever understand the presumption of innocence when they’re growing up in a society that routinely treats everyone as presumptively guilty?
With fundamental liberties under assault, Congress should not dither over picayune issues, as it did earlier this month in considering a bill to ban high-calorie snacks from school vending machines. What children eat is a parental responsibility; what schools serve is a decision for local districts.
Congress has a weightier responsibility — to preserve essential liberties for those children. Politicians need to stop worrying whether children might grow up to be fat and start worrying whether they will grow up to be free.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria. Her column appears on Mondays.
