Broad support for increased surveillance cameras, according to ABC News

I'm not normally big on talking about polls, but seeing this story, I am reminded yet again of probably the best line from the preface by Walter Cronkite to a special 1984 edition of George Orwell's 1984: "It has been said that 1984 fails as a prophecy because it succeeded as a warning--Orwell's terrible vision has been averted. Well, that kind of self-congratulation is, to say the least, premature. 1984 may not arrive on time, but there's always 1985." Reading an article like this, and seeing cities already creating systems of thousands of surveillance cameras, how can one not relate this to Orwell's dystopia full of telescreens? Certainly, an increase in surveillance cameras is the least of our problems at this point, but what is disturbing is the uncritical public support for such things in general. Of course, this is a case of a poll telling us what we already know about our society. It is interesting, but not surprising, that support for this form of increased surveillance is high across political lines. It would be superficial to associate this type of thinking with any individual politician or party. People want this, and pretty much anything else which they can be convinced might make them safer (it need not be something that will actually do anything for them at all). Fear, which is always a powerful force, becomes essentially unconquerable in the post-Christian wake of the Nietzschean "death of God" in a civilization. The men of the West today cannot find any higher good than self-preservation, and thus will sell everything--their privacy, their dignity, the lives of others, their own souls if necessary--if they are only frightened enough. Welcome to 1985.