The New American
By Beverly K. Eakman
July 22, 2010
After some 40 years of psychiatry-based “parenting,” free societies are experiencing behaviors by out-of-control children virtually unknown in the 1950s — first-graders biting and kicking their teachers; adolescents blowing away their classmates; pre-teens cursing, spitting, and vandalizing while adults look on. Advocates for a Nanny State see all this as a wedge to further their controlling agenda. Anyone curious as to where we’re headed need look no further than the United Kingdom’s now-institutionalized ASBO legislation.
In July 1998, the U.K.’s Crime and Disorder Act enacted the “Anti-Social Behaviour Orders” (ASBOs) to tackle disagreeable and disruptive acts. ASBOs are court-ordered restrictions on “unsociable conduct” aimed at youngsters aged 10 or over. Breaching an ASBO is a criminal offense.
Eight years into the legislation, some 12,675 ASBOs had been issued. Nearly 2,000 youngsters, aged 10 to 17, were jailed by 2007 for an average of six months each for breaching ASBOs. Even that was not enough. According to Mail Online, May 27, 2007 (“Revealed: Blair’s secret stalker squad”), the government attempted to widen the definition of “mental disorder” so that the right not to be detained in a psychiatric facility based on cultural, political, or religious beliefs would be forfeited.
By 2007, Britain had gone a long way to becoming the ultimate modern police state. The nation had more than 20 percent of the world’s CCTV cameras incorporating automatic number-plate recognition, facial recognition and “suspicious behavior recognition” software, which analyzes clusters and movements in search of “behavioral oddities.” Some £1 million was allocated for hidden loudspeakers so that camera operators could issue orders, very loudly, to anyone seen littering or committing other “gotcha crimes” (petty rules that are easier to enforce than dangerous acts). A competition was even launched in schools to find “socially conscious” children who might be used for voice-overs to “remind adults to act responsibly on our streets,” according to the U.K.’s Home Office.
“Emotional literacy” classes were introduced in schools to teach children how to manage anger and jealousy and develop empathy and self-motivation. This move mirrors the touchy-feely curricular trends of American classrooms — “conflict resolution,” “survival skills,” “safe sex” and “self-esteem.”
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