1984

One of the first things that a despot does after taking power is to create a secret police to enforce their rule and discourage behavior that could threaten their power base. In addition, these secret servants will also be used to help erase the collective memory of the past and rewrite history so that values and the old ways are forgotten and the new ways can be programmed into the masses. Books and records are destroyed and individuals who would remember and keep the old memories alive are castigated or eradicated.

Does this sound a little Orwellian? It should because in 1948 George Orwell wrote 1984, which described a totalitarian government led by Big Brother to censor everyone’s behavior and thoughts with a secret police and faithful member of the Inner-Party. The main character, Winston Smith, is fighting against Big Brother, but is later captured and sent to a rehabilitation center called the Ministry of Love. He is tortured until he is forced to forget his freethinking ways, and denounces everything he believed. He is released into the public where he wastes his days at the Chestnut Tree drinking gin.

George Orwell had lived through the age when Fascism and Totalitarianism had flipped the world into chaos. By 1939, dictators had reared their ugly heads in Russia, Germany, Italy, and many other countries. It was a nightmare world where an individual’s rights were subsumed to supposedly “protect” the rights of the masses. The totalitarian state rejected liberal values and exercised control over the rights of others, based on the State’s discretionary interpretation.

If you look at all the words in an English dictionary, which one would you say is the most important? “Remember” should be considered the most important. Why? Because when people do not remember, they forget. They forget what is really important and sacrifice the future for the now. They forget their heritage and cultural past that has brought them to where they are now. They forget their basic rights and allow them to be taken.

A random survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum discovered that 22 percent of Americans from the United States could name all five Simpson family members, whereas only one in 1,000 could remember all five First Amendment freedoms. Only one in four can name more than one of the five freedoms. In case you are wondering, the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment are the freedom of: speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.

You may find this a tidbit humorous, interesting, or maybe dull. However, this survey uncovers a critical weakness of the American psyche that if unheeded could lead to a kind of national Alzheimer’s disease. Forgetting basic rights can lead to diminishing those rights. There has been a seven-year-old, secret program of intelligence (secret) agencies to reclassify and remove documents at the National Archives. In a Feb. 20 article by Scot Shane in the New York Times, “ . . . intelligence agencies have been removing thousands of historical documents that were available for years, some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.”

Because the reclassification program is shrouded in secrecy, it continued virtually without outside notice until historian Matthew Aid noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been removed from the archives.

This lobotomizing of the nation’s historic memory makes it easier to not remember what has been forgotten. In the past few years, the Constitution or Bill of Rights and Freedom of Information Act seems to have been forgotten. Many do not seem to remember the lessons taught by a handful of colonists who were tired of being arrested and jailed for speaking out against King George and the British Empire. After winning the American Revolution they made sure that the rights to free speech and to protest were part of the essential freedoms in the First Amendment.

If we don’t remember and protect our rights we can easily lose what took the blood of patriots to secure. The more recent revelation that federal law was bypassed in approving warrantless electronic surveillance—spying—of Americans is one example. Another is a new bill, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that gives the Secret Service unbridled authority to suppress political dissent and increase the maximum imprisonment from six months to 10 years. The proposed law, titled “Secret Service Authorization and Technical Modification act of 2005,”also creates a new federal police force, to be called the “United States Secret Service Uniformed Division” [Gestapo]. Members of this force are authorized to carry firearms and authorized to “make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony” (sec. 3056A (b)(1)(B)).

“Reasonable grounds” is not specified, so it is left up to the mood or discretion of the federal police force officer. The targets of this law will not be terrorists or threats to national security. It will be anyone deemed a threat to the political powers that be.

With a “Secret Service” to “protect” our rights and freedoms, we can just relax under a coconut tree drinking our favorite beverage.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)