We like to believe our country is truly the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s an inspiring concept, but keeping freedom and democracy as an active principle is challenging.
How free are we when controls keep popping up? As a believer in freedom to choose our own lives, I do not believe employers should have the right to require routine drug tests unless there is a just cause.
This issue is controversial and complex. The subject deserves more than a few words, but I will keep my thoughts to some key points.
George Orwell’s famous book, 1984, was published in 1949, shortly after World War II. It was once required reading in high school English and was well worth the effort. Word “peace” in the 1940s did not provide a utopia. Instead, the U.S. and Russia began their ideological struggle, which became the infamous Cold War for the next 40 plus years. In an imagined future 1984, Orwell’s main character is dealing with a life manipulated by a government that believed in surveillance and mind control. Supposedly, it was for the greater good. Signs were posted everywhere: “Big Brother is Watching You,” and hidden microphones and TVs were prolific.
It’s interesting how these far-fetched “science fiction” ideas have appeared on the scene with the Internet, and with more government regulations and laws. Are we headed down the same path and losing more of our freedoms? Fear is a sure sign that more laws and restrictions are on the horizon.
Recent history is filled with encroachments on our liberties: the Communist Witch Hunts initiated by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the intrusions on private lives due to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, to name but two. Airline transportation for the past decade has whittled away at freedoms. It’s almost as if we are judged guilty until proven innocent in many areas of our lives, which is a total contradiction to our system of justice.