Pax Hammericana

It Never Stops

I suppose I need to hire staff or start blogging full-time, because if I wait even more than half a day to blog there is some new outrage to try to make people aware of.  Then there are just some things that blow all the other things away.  THIS is what I'm talking about in that respect.

Just in my own little corner of the world, I am actively engaged in the following issues:

Debating FOR free market health care;
working to provide a fair policy at my employer to help provide insurance to families without screwing those without families;
Working AGAINST using public resources to defeat Oklahoma House Bill 2513, which would allow concealed carry of handguns on campus;
Arguing to counteract the lies and hysteria about secondhand smoke that has led to the proliferation of smoking bans...

and on and on on.  It just never stops.  My mind is tempted to say that there must be some root cause.  And I suppose morally there is.  Certainly, as human beings, we will perpetually struggle against one another to establish our own moral vision.  But I am also reminded of the Founders' prophecy: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilence."

Still, I hope over time to discover how it is that the powerful places of policymaking were overtaken by do-gooders, authoritarians, and other seedy types -- and why it is that the struggle for liberty seems to take place largely beyond the walls of power.

The Death of Liberty By a Thousand Fingerprints

As mentioned, I am moving materials over from other places.  This is the first of several re-posts to keep up with important stories from the past.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

The Death of Liberty By a Thousand Fingerprints

There's nothing like having a society that justifies everything "for the children."  In this case, it's an overeager food service manager wanting to make sure students have enough time to eat. The solution? An expensive biometric system with which kids pay for lunch, naturally:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1665119,00.html

Apparently schools have used this system in other ways in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Best/worst line in the article:
"Now Tom McCraley, the 760-student school district's superintendent, says that before considering finger scanning, 'I'd want to make sure parents had a full understanding about it.'"

It's the same old line, time and again: If people just understood [fill in the privacy invasion], then suddenly they'd be OK with it. What's so hard about the idea that parents don't want their children tracked, scanned, monitored, and controlled by other people? Before Tom McCraley or any other superintendents take up their posts on the taxpayer doll, I'd want to make sure they have a full understanding about privacy rights and parental choice.

Personally, I think this is a great case study in how one error leads to another. For example:

"Allen says the system has helped add at least 10 minutes to lunch periods that in some schools last just 20 minutes. "

My first thought about this article was: what's so hard about giving the students 10 extra minutes for lunch?