 "Photo: Bryan Young | Daily Trojan")
There's a talking camera in University Village. Well, actually the camera doesn't talk, but there's a person on the other end of it, talking through a microphone and speaker, telling us to stop running or to quiet down, monitoring whether we are breaking the rules.
There are closed-circuit cameras like this all over Britain, 4.2 million of them, one for every 14 people in the country. By some estimates, each Briton is caught on camera an average of 300 times per day. Within 200 yards of George Orwell's London house there are 32 closed-circuit cameras scanning people's every move.
You'll recall Orwell wrote "1984," about a totalitarian state manipulating its citizens' every move via screens with cameras in the 1940s - the same decade that saw Britain fighting totalitarians in World War II under Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
In Tony Blair's Britain, the supposed purpose for these millions of closed-circuit cameras - the benign reason for their existence - is that they help the government prevent and solve crimes. Without the aid of these cameras, some crimes might never have been solved, and there really isn't much need to go into how these cameras might be abused by an Orwellian government bent on crushing freedom.
The mere existence of these cameras all over Britain, however, is a symptom of an unsettling social problem all its own: Britons, or at least their leaders, are afraid of the idea of self-defense.
In the case of the cameras, it's clear that the British have decided that free and anonymous movement should be traded for the ability of Big Brother to monitor everyone, practically everywhere, so that they can take care of their citizens, apparently infantile and unable to fend for themselves.
But Britons aren't just expected to refrain from their own self-defense; they are actively prevented from engaging in such. Since there's obviously no Constitution with a Second Amendment protecting the right of citizens to bear arms in Britain, home-invasion robberies are frighteningly common. By contrast, home invasions in America are relatively low. The logic here is that in America, where anyone could potentially have a gun in his or her house, criminals are less likely to break into a house that is occupied. But in those rare cases when a homeowner in Britain breaks the law by keeping a gun and then uses it to defend himself against robbers, he, not the assailants, is more at risk for prosecution.
Perhaps the most perfect example of this phenomenon - Britons inculcated into thinking self-defense is wrong - is the case two weeks ago of Iran capturing 15 British sailors. The sailors and their commanders fired not a single shot at the approaching Iranians before they were taken captive.
Adm. Sir Jonathon Band, the first Sea Lord - he's the head of the Royal Navy - defended the sailors and their commanders on the BBC: "I would not agree at all that it was not our finest hour. I think our people have reacted extremely well in some very difficult circumstances."
The difficult circumstances, to reiterate, were that some British military were under attack, and rather than defending themselves, they simply let the enemy capture them.
Sir Band was parroting (or parodying) something Winston Churchill said last century. When Churchill spoke of Britain's "finest hour," he meant it as a reference to Britannia defending itself against Hitler. It was nearly 67 years ago, back when a finest hour meant fighting against, not cowering before, an enemy.
Churchill told the House of Commons on June 18, 1940, "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands."
Meanwhile, in modern Britain, the current prime minister has overseen the forbearance of firearms and the implementation of cameras throughout the country, and initially had this to say about the Iranians illegally taking Royal Naval sailors captive: "I want to get (the situation) resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible."
Orwell was inspired to write "1984" by the rise of dictators such as Hitler and Stalin. Iran's ruler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should fall into the same category of fascists.
Yet Britain's response, to its detriment, is wholly different; in modern Britain, even Big Brother, the government, apparently won't defend itself against an aggressor. But that should be expected; Tony Blair is certainly not Winston Churchill. And this is certainly not Winston Churchill's Britain.
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Kip Payne is an international relations junior from Naples, Calif. His column, "Positive Detriment," runs Mondays.
