The real irony of all this is that for the $6 Billion we spent last year getting our rights violated, we really aren't any safer (nor do we need to be!). As a Vietnam veteran who got regularly mortared and rocketed in a "Secure" base camp of the First Air Cavalry, I can assure you that the element of surprise will get you every time. And the vietcong weren't even suicidal - they wanted to come back and do it again later!
Soooooo....fast forward forty years. Does anybody really think they can anticipate what a terrorist is going to do sometime in the future? Guess again. Think our geniuses in Homeland Security know? Guess again and again. The thing is, the average terrorist is smarter and more motivated than the average baggage screener. Do you think it's "unreasonable" to spend $6 Billion per annum in our tax dollars to catch a coke user or a purveyor of fraudulent checks? I do. But apparently the TSA doesn't, because that's what they advertise on their website as their big accomplishments. Obviously no one in Congress has the guts to object, because they're frightened of public opinion.
And now for the Constitutional question - is the Fourth Amendment being violated? Seems to me that those who have posted the obvious point that many trips are obligatory for job or other reasons have answered that quite well. Please consider: it's a fact that 50% of the population is just scared to death of airplanes. (And those would be the good ones, with good service, maintenance, and friendly faces even. No bombs! But every time they get on board, 50% of us sweat bullets, from takeoff to touchdown. Does that sound voluntary? Of course not. They do it because they have to. So when they go through the security line, is it any more "voluntary?" What do you think? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.
The sheep on this blog that argue for the status quo are not only wrong, they're enablers of an increasingly strident and oppressive government that wants to keep its jobs and is perfectly willing to squander the Constitution, our freedoms, our commercial progress, our taxes, and our troops in an endless war in Iraq. Security is a state of mind, not a state of being. The "guy upstairs" always knows how to use fear to manipulate all of us and keep his power. Machiavelli knew it, as did the founding fathers.
And the rest of us.......we're going to have to do something about it. Talk is cheap. But for heaven sakes write your Congress and give them hell. At least that's a start!
