It is always with reticence that I write about government intrusion into our lives. This is because so much wild-eyed speculation is thrown around in cyberspace that one must be alert to what is and is not true in this incendiary area of concern. We get an endless parade of alerts that FEMA camps are almost ready to begin herding Christians, in particular, into the American version of Nazi-style concentration camps. The reports never cease of things such as the claim that gigantic, coffin-like containers are stacked and ready for mass burials at such a time when citizen resistance will be met with deadly force to put down rioting throughout the homeland.

The very term “homeland security” evokes thoughts of 1930s Germany and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and his genocidal Nazi maniacs. Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security director, is referred to caustically in some circles as “Big Sis,” a takeoff on George Orwell’s sinister symbol of tyranny, Big Brother. It is a matter concerning which she is said to recently have expressed her considerable irritation.

No matter how one chooses to frame in words the growing hold the federal government progressively exerts on our lives, it is essential that we look seriously at the problem while there remains freedom to do so. I dislike triteness, but the trite is true in this case. Where there is smoke there is fire. There is a lot of smoke clouding our future with regard to whether Americans will remain a free people.

The most concerning news that sparked this writing was the report so close to the doings of Hitler’s rise to power as to be chilling. At the same time, the news item seemed so low key at first glance as to be innocuous. But, after that first glance, it became so blatant that even the strangest of bedfellows were, in my mind, joined in resistance to the intrusion.

Children in the Long Island, New York area a few years back were strapped with monitors to keep a running check on their health. The program was the results of the school administrators’ desire to know about the condition of the kids’ problems with obesity. The action was apparently taken without the parents’ knowledge in many cases.

Reports were that this would soon become a full-scale program to monitor the children’s physical activities around the clock. The devices were like wristwatches, and counted heartbeats, monitored body movement during daily activities, and even measured sleep habits, according to the news story of that time. It was all an attempt to get a handle on what the powers that be considered a growing obesity problem, according to those doing the monitoring.

The information was displayed on a color-coded screen and got transmitted to a password-protected website that students and educators could access.

The devices, ostensibly to keep check on health status of those monitored, were put on children in public school systems around the U.S. without the knowledge of many of the parents whose children were involved. Considering the government-controlled health system voted in before 2010 by Congress and signed by President Obama, we can only imagine what the system has produced thus far, and where use of this kind of information might lead.

The matter was and is of sufficient concern that even an entity traditionally sycophantic toward any liberal government program was at the time of its implementation expressing concern. Jay Stanley, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “When you get into monitoring people’s biological vital signs, that’s a pretty intrusive measurement. There are key privacy interests at play.” Stanley said that at the very least, parents must have a say in how long the data will be stored and who will have access to it and schools must obtain parents’ consent. “A program like this should only be voluntary. Nobody should be forced to reveal biological indicators,” Stanley added.

The Hitler “Youth Corps” comes to mind when thinking on this and other of today’s government power grabs to control the structure of the American family and the day-to-day rearing of our children.

When Congress–and the president—decided in 1963 to try to kick God out of the American public school system, a flood of insanity gushed in to fill the void. It hasn’t stopped gushing. We have reared generations of children who are becoming ever farther alienated from the family model the God of Heaven instituted. Government has become the keeper of our children. The results are not greater freedom, but an ever-more restrictive way of life in what was once called “the land of the free.” Big Brother’s noose of enslavement, like that Hitler perpetrated those many decades ago, might be on America’s horizon.

Next, we will look at how other signals of government control threaten the American way of life.

The cure for what ails this, or any nation, of course, is found in the most notable of scriptural prescriptions found in God’s Holy Word. It is an Rx that speaks directly to all born-again children of God today–the Church.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).