"Spying is Okay if it's not Orwellian

Published 01 December 2002

(word count: 750)

What a relief.  For a horrible moment or two there I thought that the long-anticipated dawn of an American-style version of 1984 was finally upon us.  I came by this misbegotten notion after reading articles about how the Pentagon, in recognizing the need to treat all of us as terrorists in order to protect us from terrorists, plans to build the Mother of All Computer Databases that will monitor every purchase made by every citizen in the nation.  Our masters in Washington call it Total Information Awareness.

Visions of Big Brother danced in my cranium.  Purchase Viagra online and Bureaucrat Bob chortles.  Slip a Hustler onto your credit card and Functionary Phil snickers.  Make a “sudden and large cash withdrawal” to pay for your colonoscopy and Agency Annie in faraway Washington makes a notation in your dossier.

My relief came in the form of an article on the Heritage Foundation web site.  Michael Scardaville patiently explained to me that this massive electronic voyeurism is not a nefarious Orwellian plot being developed “in the nether world of the intelligence community to subvert democracy and civil liberty” because it’s being done openly.  DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the folks who invented the internet, are proudly ballyhooing their latest electronic spy net to anyone who’ll listen.

Scardaville took 920 words to explain what I can say in fourteen: “Since the government isn’t plotting in secret there’s nothing to fear from the government.”

His reassurance enabled me to put other recent news stories in perspective.  Consider this case in Brunswick County NC.  In two different raids, a gangland organization known as “The Sheriff's Department” confiscated over $4,000 in suspected drug money from the very citizens they’re sworn to protect.  No drugs were found and no charges were filed. But the gang’s local henchmen, known as a “Court of Appeals,” ruled that the money didn’t have to be returned.  Since this governmentally approved mugging was pulled off in broad daylight it doesn’t qualify as Orwellian.  So, according to Scardaville’s logic, there’s no need to fear our own government.

And how many stories have we all read about the wrong home being invaded by SWAT teams?  (Does that stand for Shooting Wage-earners And Taxpayers?)  Only after a Muskego WI woman “was forced to the snowy ground and handcuffed” did the merry band of Swatters discover that none of them were smart enough to read house numbers.  The local sheriff explained later why no disciplinary action was meted out to the bunglers:  “Nobody did anything intentionally reckless.”  So now we have a clarification of what is or is not Orwellian.  “Intentionally reckless” is Orwellian.  “Stupidly reckless” is no justification to fear our own government.

Sometimes, two different news stories are actually the same story.  A recently passed federal law requires all high schools to hand over the names, addresses, and phone numbers of students to military recruiters.  Meanwhile, a fed appeals court ruled that our benevolent non-Orwellian government does not owe free lifetime medical care to World War II and Korean War vets in exchange for 20 years of service, despite promises made to them by recruiters at the time.  That, of course, was a standard ploy throughout the Indian Wars.  “Promise those savages anything to get their names on that treaty.  We’ll find a way to legalistically weasel out of the promises later.”  Makes a skeptic wonder just what today’s military recruiting corps will be promising our kids today that will be yanked out from under their unsuspecting butts tomorrow.

But is this slimy subterfuge “Orwellian?”  Let’s remember that George Orwell, the original proprietor of that name, penned a little volume called Animal Farm.  In it, the farmyard beasts drive out the humans and then post their new society’s motto on the barn: “All animals are equal.”  Later, when the pigs in power metamorphose into humans (a clever reversal on the observation that when humans gain power they turn into pigs) the motto is appended: “But some animals are more equal than others.”

Hence:  “Promise those students anything to get their names on that recruitment paper.  We’ll find a way to legalistically weasel out of the promises later.”  Orwellian, indeed.

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank.  Michael Scardaville is one of their staff policy experts.  Together they make great apologists for the Americanized electronic KGB.  Knowing this is to know the root of my real relief – further confirmation that libertarians should never truck with conservatives.

- by Garry Reed