The Oregon Senate has approved a plan to screen first-born children for medical and social problems, and the House is expected to follow suit.

What exactly does this mean? I'm not 100 percent sure. But I know enough to tell it is an incredibly bad, hopelessly intrusive idea that makes George Orwell seem like a prophet.

Backers of the plan, notably one Gov. John Kitzhaber, say that with so many broken, dysfunctional families, the state needs to do more to identify and help at-risk children.

The plan calls for screening all first-born infants – about 18,000 a year in the state – for medical problems and risk factors that could lead to abuse or neglect, or cause children to fail in school. Nurses and other professional busybodies would have license to visit homes of new parents to check them out for drug use and alcohol problems among other things.

Like what other things? Well, already hospitals and doctors in Oregon and elsewhere survey new parents on subjects such as whether they keep guns in the home. Children, too, are sometimes asked these questions in visits with pediatricians.

In other words, this is about social engineering by the state – not diagnosing medical problems. This is just another power play by government to see how far people will allow Big Brother to go in insinuating itself into the most intimate details of your private family life.

And the sad part is there doesn't seem to be any understanding growing within our country that government is far exceeding its constitutional and proper authority. No one really seems to be all that concerned about invasions of privacy.

The costs of such power plays are stunning.

In Oregon, this program is expected to cost $66 million a year. That's a lot of money in a small state. In fact, if you took that money and merely redistributed it to the 18,000 families under scrutiny every year, you could gift them each $3,667.

Now, I'm not into redistribution of wealth. But, if the goal were really to help these folks, which, of course, it isn't, don't you think the cash in the pocket would do more than the snooping?

I'm amazed. I sit here continually astonished at the way Americans from coast to coast watch their freedoms disappear without a concern in the world. Think of the sacrifices that were made so that our country would not end up as another totalitarian gulag state. But we see ourselves plummeting down the slippery slope toward tyranny, and many of us embrace it because we feel more secure and safer under the watchful eyes of the nanny-state. It makes me sick.

What can we do about it? That's the key question. Every day, people hopefully ask me how to stop these disturbing trends, reverse them, get our country back.

The first step is always being informed – understanding the threats and fighting them.

A great resource for understanding the encroaching power of the state and other forces attacking our privacy rights is a new book by Michael Hyatt. It's a great primer, and it offers a blueprint for protecting yourself and fighting back.

It's called "Invasion of Privacy: How to Protect Yourself in the Digital Age," and it is available in the WorldNetDaily online store. If you think I'm just simply hyping another product that happens to be in the WorldNetDaily store, sample it free for yourself.

Last week, WorldNetDaily offered a serialization of the first chapter. The hotlinks to that series are offered below. Hyatt explains that privacy in our digital age is often literally a matter of life and death. Whether the invasions come from private companies or government agencies, there are always unintended consequences and hidden agendas behind the intrusions.

It's time to say, "Enough is enough. I'm not going to take it anymore." It's time to just say no to the professional snoops – especially those we pay with our hard-earned tax dollars.

Related articles:

Part 1: Why personal secrets are no more

Part 2: Who's tracking you?

Part 3: Is technology the problem?