By Doug Newman
Slight revision of this column from July 14, 2011.
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In a little less than a week, I will be flying for the third time this year. When I get to the airport, I will be faced with three abhorrent choices:
- Have myself photographed in my birthday suit by one of those very possibly cancer-causing nudie-nukers.
- Have my crotch groped by some tax-mainlining pervert in an act that anywhere else would constitute sexual assault. This is also full of health risks.
- Not flying.
And if you are going to say, “Then just don’t fly”, then you just don’t get it.
As Vin Suprynowicz has put it, “It’s all a vicious game of ‘let’s pretend.’”
TSA does not keep you safe. It never has. It never will.
I have said before – Suprynowicz says something similar – that if a terrorist really wanted to kill a lot of people and disrupt aviation, he would not go to all the trouble of smuggling a bomb onto a plane. Rather, he would set off a bomb in a terminal.
Terrorists could even orchestrate a coordinated attack at multiple locations. Imagine bombs going off at eight on a Monday morning at, say, ATL, ORD, LAX and DFW. Imagine thousands dead and America’s four largest aviation hubs crippled indefinitely.
TSA waits until well after you enter a terminal before commencing with gate rape. Not only have they never caught a terrorist in over a decade, but they leave most parts of airports … ahem … “unprotected.”
Why try to sneak a bomb onto a plane when you could kill so many more people right here?
(Last year, a congressthing announced that there had been 25,000 breaches of TSA since its inception in 2001.)
Besides, who says a terrorist attack has to involve planes and airports?
Elsewhere, looking at a nude photograph of a minor would be considered child pornography and would land you in the joint. Not so with TSA.
I mean, like, terrorists could attack train stations, bus stations, schools, shopping malls, stadiums and grocery stores. Are you willing to be sexually assaulted every time you enter such venues? Are you willing to have career perverts grope and ogle your six-year-old kids as they walk into school? How far down this road are you willing to go?
I write this in the aftermath of Jerry Sandusky’s conviction on 45 counts of child molestation. Yes, we should be outraged about these crimes and the cover up by the Penn State establishment. Why are we not just as outraged about the fact that TSA flunkies molest children at airports every day and get away with it?
And if TSA is oh so necessary to keep us “secure” from terrorists at airports, why don’t they also station their blue shirts at train stations and bus stations? Why don’t they interrupt traffic on highways? I mean, like, you never know when or where a terrorist could hypothetically, theoretically strike next. You can’t be too careful.
Oh, wait. They already have.
One of the grievances spelled out in the Declaration of Independence – and the basis for the Third Amendment – was “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” I am sure that King George III never dreamt of authorizing the redcoats to grope the crotches of the colonists, much less justified such institutionalized depravity in the name of a higher good. (And if he had, the “shot heard round the world” would have been fired much sooner than April 19, 1775. People had self-respect back then.)
My friend, classmate and hero, Allan Macurdy. 1960-2008
Allan Macurdy is perhaps the most amazing person I have ever known. Diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy at age 7, he let nothing stand in his way. In spite of absolutely daunting physical challenges, he would become a professor of law at Boston University.
I don’t know about Allan’s politics, nor will I ever care. And I have no idea what he would think about TSA. However, I want to steal a phrase from him: “higher parade of horribles.” He used this phrase when discussing how much physical adversity a person would accept before they simply lost the will to live.
Likewise, there is a “higher parade of horribles” that applies to TSA. As horrible as terrorism is, there would be something immeasurably more horrible: life under a totalitarian government.
And this is exactly what millions of Americans seem willing to accept in the name of “security”. How else would you describe a government that will presume its citizens guilty until proven innocent and molest and assault them as a condition of movement? When we forsake the presumption of innocence, we lose America.
And if you will quietly accept TSA’s sexual – and scatalogical – humiliation, what will you not accept? Where will you draw the line? If you think TSA is of secondary importance, then don’t complain to me about the IRS or Obamacare. You have already told me that you will allow your government to do absolutely anything.
I would rather live in a free society with the very remote chance of being a victim of terrorism than in a place such as Cuba or North Korea, with a ubiquitous “national security” apparatus and no liberty whatsoever.
And if this higher horrible of a truly totalitarian state does come to pass on these shores, it will not be the fault of Dubya or Obomber or Al-Qaeda or Al-whatever. It will be because of millions of Americans allowed their government to do absolutely anything to keep them “secure.”
Oh how I wish I had said this first: Our liberty was not stolen from us. It died from lack of exercise.
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Fascinating info on TSA waste. (Thank you, Tony.)
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