OPINION:
The majority of Americans nowadays believe they’re being watched by their own government.
Give it a generation, and that finding will read like this: The majority of Americans now believe it’s OK for their government to watch them.
And then the police state will be complete.
Drip, drip, drip. What once was unthinkable has now become believable. What once was unfathomable will soon become the norm — the expected. So goes the state of America’s cherished constitutional privacy and individual, God-given rights.
“A majority of the American public believe that the U.S. government engages in widespread monitoring of its own citizens and worry that the U.S. government could be invading their own privacy,” a Monmouth University poll found.
Pollsters also reported that a large portion of America believes in the “Deep State” manipulation of government, perpetrated by those who aren’t elected — heck, by some of those who aren’t even seen.
By the numbers, 52 percent of America is either very worried or somewhat worried about the potential for government to conduct unauthorized surveillance of private citizens’ activities. And that’s nonpartisan — the split who believe this is 57 percent independent, 51 percent Republican and 50 percent Democrat.
Meanwhile, eight of 10 think the government already spies on U.S. citizens.
“This is a worrisome finding,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
Should say so.
But what’s more worrisome is the potentials this poll brings.
After all, if Americans are currently worried about government surveillance, and currently believe the government is now surveilling its own citizens, chances are those coming behind — those in the younger generations — are being taught in the government-run schools that this sort of thing is quite OK.
That it’s indeed proper and necessary for U.S. security and safety.
That it’s for the good of the country, and worth every bit of collective usurpation of individual privacy and constitutional protection.
Students are already being taught the Founding Fathers were racist, misogynist, discriminatory and evil. They’re already being taught the Constitution, along with other founding documents, must inherently be racist, misogynist, discriminatory and evil because the writers owned slaves and shut out women from government — and therefore, all they wrote ought to be shred and torn and ripped from society, replaced with more progressive governing ideals.
They’re already being taught that guns are bad, the Second Amendment outdated; God is for Sunday, not for society; government is the solution, not the problem; free speech is dangerous, needful of control; and in general, the right of the individual must — always — cave to the concerns of the collective. They’re already being taught these types of rights that promote the importance of the individual over the good of the larger body are selfish, anti-globalist and therefore, wrong.
What’s a little government surveillance of its citizens thrown into the mix?
Ronald Reagan put it right when he spoke of the faulty logic behind a government that pretended it was simply here to help. But “Deep State” politicking adds a new level of concern, a bigger problem to consider. Simply put, we’re not just talking about ineffective government, as described by Reagan. We’re talking about a free society versus a police state.
And Americans concerned about the direction of freedoms in this country need to take steps to make sure the upcoming generations know what this nation was supposed to be, as well as what it’s supposed to stay. Privacy rights, individual freedoms and authorities vested by God and supported by the Constitution must not, must never, fall and crumble on the flimsy and ever-expanding arguments of government’s supposed need to know.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.