Big Brother Bother
VIEWPOINT
by Eldon Griffiths
A message that freedom lovers on both sides of the Atlantic hate to receive is, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Here are two recent examples of the kind of government help that I can do without.
In London, the British Parliament, where I sat for 25 years, recently interfered with my freedom of speech by blocking an e-mail I sent to one of its members.
A member had asked to see a column I had written about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and what this said about the state of public morals in America.
To make my point, I quoted from a famous book, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,” by the conservative judge Robert Bork, who, like me, put much of the blame on the violence and sadomasochism that spews out of our TV screens.
My column never arrived on the MP’s screen.
It was automatically rejected by a robot censor designed to protect members of parliament from pornography.
Judge Bork, you see, had cited examples of pedophilia and sadomasochism (against which we were protesting), and these included words that automatically triggered the electronic block.
There is an argument for this.
British MPs, like U.S. congressmen, are deluged (as we all are) with weirdo and porno e-mails.
So it’s not unreasonable to install protective systems that filter out offensive matter.
But censorship by robots? However well-intended, this does more harm than good, especially when as happens in the Houses of Parliament, neither the sender nor the receiver is told why and from whom such e-mails have been blocked.
Example two of government “help” comes from Orange County where I recently leased my home to a rising young executive who’s moving to Laguna Niguel.
We shook hands on a deal that suits us both,the tenant is happy with the house, the rent and the location, and I’m planning a long trip overseas.
Enter the government and its allies, (in this case) the real estate lawyers.
Anyone who rents or buys in OC now is required to sign a declaration that he or she has been warned about the dangers of,count them,imported fire ants, coyotes, rattlesnakes, raccoons and skunks; San Onofre nuclear power station; a HOLF (helicopter outlying landing field) from which the U.S. Marines one day might launch night flights; the sheriff’s desire to expand Musick jail; and the possibility of more aircraft noise if John Wayne Airport is extended.
Now I am all in favor of requiring sellers and landlords to disclose all the information that may be relevant to a property deal.
Like hundreds of other homeowners, I’ve been stung by extra charges arising from a community mold problem of which I knew nothing when we bought.
But why is the government in the business of alarming buyers and renters by forcing them to sign declarations about everything that can go wrong,but not right,when they move into Orange County?
What happened to caveat emptor, the principles of buyers beware?
Our tenants were not put off by Big Brother’s warnings.
As responsible people, they did not need officials to tell them that red ants bite and coyotes howl.
They’d also figured out, for instance by reading the newspapers, that a new airport at El Toro was killed stone dead by last year’s referendum; that San Onofre is not some local Chernobyl threatening to explode; and that the sheriff’s request for new jail space does not mean that hordes of murderers are about to be unleashed on South County.
What did worry our tenants,as it worries me,is the inference that it’s the government’s job to protect its officials’ rears against lawsuits by forcing citizens to sign documents confirming that they have been warned about the awfulness they may face if they move into OC.
And the same goes the other way round. I’d be just as much opposed to officials forcing buyers and renters to confirm that they’d read OC booster books promoting its high-tech jobs and beaches, mountains and ski slopes, all within a 90-minute drive.
Nationally, it’s different.
I don’t envy poor old Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security secretary, who’s tasked by the president and Congress to assess every possible risk of terrorists, real or fake, slipping anthrax into the milk or semtex into the mail.
And Ridge has to make these calls while avoiding the danger of doing the terrorists’ dirty work for them,by unduly alarming America and spending billions on excessive precautions.
But spare us the exertions of local bureaucrats in fancy offices doing our due diligence for us in the matter of raccoons and possums.
The point I am getting at is this: Technology is increasing the reach of corporate bodies,big government, big companies, big unions and big media,into our private lives. Simultaneously, the individual’s power over his or her own affairs is diminishing. It follows that the more we rely on officials, no matter how benign, to figure out the pluses and minuses of decisions that we can take for ourselves, the less real freedom we’ll have.
Abraham Lincoln was onto this when he warned that “any government that is big enough to give you all you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.”
But it was a Russian speaking from experience that made the point more clearly. Bureaucracy, wrote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “creates the illusion that it can quench people’s thirst for security and justice. In fact it lulls them into thinking that the steamroller that is about to flatten them is a blessing in disguise.”
Griffiths, a resident of Laguna Niguel, is an author, journalist, former member of the House of Commons and under-secretary of state in the U.K. government.
