Whew!
We heard so much about it, and now the whirlwind first 100 days of the new Congress is over. During this period we were frontally assaulted by that orgy of legislation, the Contract on . . . er, with America.
Was it good for you?
For all of the bluster, little of the meat of the Contract is law, thanks in large part to the methodical and rational apparatus of the Senate. But, as so often happens in the post-climax delirium of the afterglow, the weirdness begins, in this case the most glaring evidence of why the thought police moniker is SO appropriate.
For those of you on the Internet, the Communications Decency Act is on the board, intended to stop racy literature from being exchanged via downloading.
Orwell was only 11 years early. It's 1995, and the CyberCops are coming.
It's proponents say the intent is to "protect" children from accessing sexual material and to stop "obscenity" from being exchanged. But there are already laws against things such as child pornography. No, the real intent is to use this new medium to resuscitate the old obscenity (buzzword for porn) argument, its newness and growing accessibility apparently justifying some form of censorship. Speaking of resuscitation, the flag-burning debate has reared its ugly head again, and those congressional gremlins are looking for another crack at tinkering with the Constitution.
Here we go again.
This issue is cyclical. It comes around every five years, kind of like mud slides in Southern California. Each time, the argument of how the flag is a "national symbol" is put forth, and each time, the incidence of this stupid act is nil until it hits the spotlight. We've seen that the best way to deter flag burners is to ignore them, so why the hell are we going to give them another opportunity for public martyrdom? But who needs heinous logic anyway?
It's scary that soon this could be a country where people can make something out of cloth and can't do with it as they please. What constitutes a flag? Would this ban cakes with the flag drawn on them from being eaten? And God forbid if someone wore boxers in a flag pattern. Maybe I'm forgetting that this could be part of the plan. In order to justify increased spending on prisons, just create new crimes to fill them. Brilliant!
Back on the electronic front, a new addition to the asinine Children's Television Act of 1990 is being pondered. Television stations would be COMPELLED to air educational programming for children sometime between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Huh? A Republican Congress regulating not only business operations, but telling them what type of product to offer? Maybe I'm missing something, but was TV ever meant to babysit?
By July 4, the House is promising to tackle school prayer, again by monkeying with the Constitution. They seem to think we need a law reinstituting it. No matter that prayer never really left the schools. Unless they were being disruptive, it's safe to say that no one has ever been stopped from praying in a public school. Anyone who was has grounds for a lawsuit. Proponents won't tell you that. So why the law? Well, this is another veiled attempt by the government to control what children think, usurping the authority of parents. Can anyone say "spirit police"?
What do all of these have in common? Each is an attempt to federally mandate or outlaw sorts of expression, circumventing the First Amendment (that's why two are in the form of amendments), expanding the scope of government power to regulate dissemination of opinion. Three of them have as basic selling points the "protection" of children. But to enforce these new restrictions, new levels of bureaucracy have to be created. This from the party who promised less government.
I'm not letting liberals off the hook either. The Communication Decency Act and educational TV measure are each co-sponsored by a Democrat. In many cases, Democrats have been all-too-eager to regulate for the sake of regulation. But why would conservatives vote for such measures? How are Republicans serving as accomplices to the same Democratic elements they criticized for expanding big government?
Well, it took a Republican Congress to show what many have known all along. Republicans' stated desire for less government is a lie. A BIG lie. They just want it in a different area, and even many conservatives are disgusted. This Congress wants to get government off your back, alright . . . and into your closets, modems, hard drives, wombs, pants, minds, VCRs, etc. You wanted less government, you got it. Block grants for school lunches, the phasing out of PBS funding, mythology based welfare reform and so on. But all Faustian bargains come with a price. The aforementioned cuts aren't going toward deficit reduction, they're going to finance enforcement of laws like these and the return of Star Wars. Doublespeak is alive and well.
Welcome to Oceania!
Tyrone Henry would like to dedicate this to his friend, Cassie, since she insisted. He is a political science senior.