If things keep going the way they're going, the people in Russia will soon have more freedom than we do.
Lisa Dean of the Free Congress Foundation returned from a recent trip to Russia with the uncomfortable feeling that personal liberties in the old "Evil Empire" may be more secure than they are here in the "Land of the Free." Speaking to Russians young and old, Dean "saw happiness in their faces and heard hopefulness in their voices. The young people talked of their futures and how to make their country even better," she recalls. "Those who remember life under the Soviet system praised the freedom they have today."
Back home in the good old US of A, Dean encountered the latest manifestation of an ominous trend in "a new federal guideline designed to monitor public school students before and after they graduate and enter into their professional lives. This is being done in conjunction with the Goals 2000 and School-To-Work education projects," she observes. "Under these guidelines, states will maintain databases on every student's after-school employer, his occupation after graduation, and whether his company has a union -- and share that information with the Department of Education."
Dean notes that the U.S. Senate has passed "the Workforce Investment Partnership Act, which links the Department of Education's databases on students to those of the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. The House has already approved its companion bill," she continues. "What our federal legislature has just done is to seal the fate of the same children they claim to protect, by ensuring that their lives will be recorded from their academic years through the end of their professional lives."
What is so ominous about this development? "In Soviet times," Dean declares, "the reason the government collected this type of information was clear: the communists wanted to control their citizens. So, what's our government trying to do?" she demands. "Young people have graduated, held jobs, and acquired skills throughout this century without the federal government tracking their every move."
While chatting with her new Russian friends, Dean "explained what our government is doing and even gave the Administration's reasons for doing so -- namely, protecting children and ensuring national security." To a man, the Russians rejected the rationale. Why? "Because," they said, "the Soviet Union used the same excuses."
Can we not learn from the travails of others? Must we sample every misery for ourselves? Parents, are any of you paying attention? Do you really want your children branded at birth like some kind of livestock, browbeaten and berated until their spirits are broken and they learn to conform, herded into deadend jobs by bureaucratic drovers? Then do something, and do it now, because this is the prospect that faces your children and grandchildren, flesh of your flesh, those remarkable young souls with special talents, big dreams, and boundless potential, each a unique person with dignity made in the image of God. Let no one debase your precious progeny.
