David McElroy

It sounds like something from a dystopian science fiction novel, but it’s real. The Oxford City Council in England has decided that all of the city’s 600 taxies are to have video and audio recording equipment — to record all conversations of occupants. It’s for “public safety,” of course.

According to the politicians who passed the law, all conversations are to be recorded, but no conversations will be listened to unless it’s a “police matter.” And we know that such information in the hands of police is never abused, so we don’t have to worry.

This is a great idea, but it needs to be expanded greatly. For instance, to protect against the risk of workplace crime — or even sexual harassment — they need to insist that all businesses record all employee conversations. And homes are rife with domestic violence, so every home should be required to have multiple cameras in every room. And given the fact that charges of rape so frequently come down to disputes over what happened, it definitely should be mandated that cameras record all sexual activity. (But your privacy is assured, because no one will look at the video — stored by the police, of course — unless there’s been a crime committed.) And since politicians frequently turn corrupt and take bribes, the City Council members need to be recorded 24/7 in all of their private conversations.

Surely the council members wouldn’t object to placing themselves under the same kind of surveillance they demand of the general public, because politicians never pass laws that don’t affect them as they do the public, do they?

The arrogance of collectivists seems to know no bounds. What’s even worse, their attitudes are so ingrained that they don’t even realize they’re being arrogant. Instead, they see themselves as magnanimous folks helping the collective.

Two completely unrelated stories Monday focused my attention on this. First, I read comments from retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens defending the decision he wrote in the infamous Kelo case — the one that made it legal for local governments to take property from pretty much anybody and give it to private entities to do what they want with it.

Even now, he seems to think that case wasn’t a big deal, even knowing the outcome — that the homes of Kelo and others were taken from them against their will and torn down, all to end up with useless vacant lots. (You might recall that a Connecticut Supreme Court justice who ruled against Kelo sees things differently now.)

The second story that made me focus on the arrogance of collectivists was close to me. Here in the Birmingham area, the city of Birmingham is mostly just the core older parts of town. It’s been losing residents for 50 years. Even though the metro area has a million people now, the core city is down to about 200,000. Although there are wealthy pockets remaining, most people who have the ability have moved to suburbs where the government isn’t so dysfunctional and the schools are still good (at least by modern standards).

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As I’ve been watching the leaves turn colors and then fall onto the ground and die this fall, I’ve been seeing them as a metaphor for empires from history that come and go. And I’ve been wondering whether the people who lived in those fallen empires ever had the sense that their empire was fading away.

My suspicion is that if there had been newspapers or bloggers in the dying days of the Roman Empire or the Mongol Empire or the Holy Roman Empire, one of them might have written something a bit like this: “Amid all the talk of gloom and doom in the Roman Empire today, it’s worth pausing to remember that our great empire remains the greatest and most powerful country on Earth. It is a nation with a promising future.”

Don’t you think they would have seen it that way? I say that because this country is clearly in decline as an empire. (Well, we’re usually too polite today to use the word “empire,” but it’s not really any different, is it?) Every great empire from the past has been seen as unique and long-lasting when it was powerful, but each has fallen over time. Even though the United States remains the strongest military force in the world and even though its economy is still very powerful, what is it that makes us believe we will be any different from those empires that have died and been replaced by something else?

The truth is that Americans really do believe — as the people of those empires believed — that we’re somehow different. We’re “the greatest country on Earth.” (Here’s a recent opinion column in the Los Angeles Times that sings yet another verse of that popular song.)

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