Posted on 06/06/2023 9:52:53 AM PDT by Twotone
Have schools stopped teaching "Nineteen Eighty-Four" — or are they now teaching it as a playbook for America to follow?
Either way, nearly a third of Generation Z loves Big Brother.
A survey by the Cato Institute finds 29% of Americans aged 18-29 respond affirmatively when asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?"
In 1791, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed building a "panopticon" in which people's behavior could be monitored at all times.
But Bentham's panopticon was meant to be a prison. A sizable segment of Generation Z would like to call it home.
Millennials are almost as submissive: 20% of the cohort between the ages of 30 and 44 also wants everyone watched. Among Americans 45 and older, support for such totalitarian surveillance rises no higher than 6%.
Yet the youngest adults are not the only ones with a disproportionate desire to live under the state's all-seeing eye. There are political disparities, too, with 19% of liberals and 18% of centrists agreeing that our daily lives ought to be captured on camera for our own safety.
Only about half as many respondents (9 to 11%) who identify as conservative, very conservative or very liberal say the same thing.
Privacy and civil liberties seem like a "horseshoe" issue that unites the ends of the political spectrum. It's the middle that has the ethic of old East German secret police — or the KGB.
Maybe that's not surprising considering the way that respectable liberal institutions now run themselves.
From Ivy League campuses to the publishing industry and the digital domains of Facebook, there is an Orwellian sense of perpetual emergency, an irrational fear that misinformation and hate speech will overwhelm society unless every utterance is subject to a censor's scrutiny. Even Orwell didn't imagine Newspeak would require new pronouns.
Also unsurprising is that where there are age and partisan divides, there are racial and ethnic ones as well. Thirty-three percent of black Americans would welcome in-home government surveillance, as would 25% of Hispanics. Among whites and Asians, the figures are 9% and 11% respectively.
This makes all too much sense. When liberals demonize and defund police, blacks are most likely to be the victims of resurgent crime. Surveillance may seem like a solution, as a replacement for absent beat cops.
But is a policy like stop-and-frisk worse than creating such a sense of vulnerability in a community that a third of its members would accept spycams in every home?
Libertarians like those at the Cato Institute may be reluctant to think such thoughts.
They've long chosen to overlook the risks to American liberties posed by unlimited immigration. But if a quarter of Hispanics accept totalistic surveillance, does a porous border with Mexico really advance freedom in our country?
Race and national origin are not destiny where political views are concerned, of course. But if conservatives and libertarians believe in American exceptionalism, making America resemble the rest of the world through immigration poses an obvious hazard.
American commitments to the sanctity of property, privacy, and the right to keep and bear arms are not traditions familiar to other parts of the world. If we want to remain exceptional in these regards — which are of the utmost concern to libertarians — we must limit immigration to a rate that allows for assimilation.
Earlier waves of immigrants were susceptible to the violent anarchist enthusiasms of early 20th-century Europe. An immigration pause put an end to that.
Today the bigger concern isn't that another Leon Czolgosz or Sacco and Vanzetti are crossing the Rio Grande, but that our liberal educational institutions encourage alienation from, rather than enculturation into, our nation's exceptional freedoms.
Cato undertook its survey of American attitudes toward surveillance in the home as part of a study of opinions about the prospect of a "central bank digital currency."
The intersection of technology and banking may seem far removed from the question of putting our lives on camera, but Cato vice president and director of polling Emily Ekins had a hunch that proved correct.
She found a strong correlation: "more than half (53 percent) of those who support the United States adopting a CBDC are also supportive of government surveillance cameras in homes, while only 2 percent of those who oppose a CBDC feel the same."
A digital currency would potentially allow the federal government and Federal Reserve to track every dollar Americans spend or receive.
It would facilitate social and socialist experiments like the creation of a universal basic income and enable authorities to delete money from anyone's account.
If we shudder at the thought of Big Brother's eyes in our homes, we should also be alert to his hands in our pockets.
Surveillance cameras are so 1984. Surveillance micro chip implants is what Big Big Guy is striving for today.
Places like the Soviet Union and East Germany were amateurs. Plenty of people in those places wanted to get out. Here in America we’ve built a society that is arguably more intrusive, but people think it’s awesome and seem to want much more of it. 81 million people voted for it. Or, if they didn’t, then 350 million people accepted the lie that 81 million people voted for it. It’s all good. Government is my best friend.
Of course they are in favor of it. The question is framed as a positive, watching for bad behavior.
Change the question. Are you okay with a camera watching you poop, change your clothes, watch TV, use your computer and have private conversations about private things?
“be alert to his hands in our pockets.”
hey buddy that’s not my keys ......
Go through the age/demographic numbers and draw your own conclusions.
Alexa, RING doorbells, indoor video cameras (i.e., nanny cams) are often linked to the cloud. Cells phones, GPS, also monitor us.
People do it for convenience and security (protection from burglars).
Orwell never predicted that people would not only volunteer to be monitored, but would pay for the coolest, most expensive monitoring equipment they could afford.
The Instagram and TikTok generation says, “HELL, YES! In fact I have an OnlyFans page where people PAY to to watch me poop! Want to subscribe?”
I wonder what the breakdown is by sex.
Anyone with a Smart Phone is being monitored whether they realize it or not. Simply because it’s turned off at some point doesn’t mean you can’t be tracked. I don’t know if these kids are aware of that and if they are they don’t seem to care.
I noticed years ago today’s Leftys are all about Big Brother government as opposed to their parents and grandparents day when it was cool and hip to ‘’fight the Establishment’’.
“In fact I have an OnlyFans page where people PAY to to watch me poop!”
Yep. If the government links a tracking chip and in-home surveillance to UBI, probably half the country will just sign up voluntarily.
29% of Americans aged 18-29 respond affirmatively when asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?"And that's just the start.
Thirty-three percent of black Americans would welcome in-home government surveillance, as would 25 percent of Hispanics. Among whites and Asians, the figures are 9 percent and 11 percent respectively.The author excuses these numbers based upon the insecurity of blacks and Latins due to unpoliced crime -- I'm not so sure. I can see many but not 1/3rd of blacks wanting government surveillance to protect themselves from what can only be reasonably seen as threats from other blacks. I'd say it's more of a inferiority / totalitarian impulse to control others than to protect themselves.
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