This gentleman is on the right track. TSA has gone off the rails in terms of the invasiveness and stupidity of its procedures, and if being noncooperative jerks and refusing to fly is the only way we can fight it, then we need to be noncooperative jerks and refuse to fly.
I was once on the team that wrote the training manuals for airport screeners (both baggage and passenger checkpoint). If my experience and knowledge is still accurate (and I’ve seen nothing to persuade me that there’s been a change at TSA), these new screening techniques are little more than a combination of petty bureaucrats on a power trip and political appointees attempting to create the appearance of security in lieu of actual security. I’m not an expert, just someone familiar with TSA’s SOP.
Conservatives often say that “freedom isn’t free,” in the context of honoring our veterans. But I think the phrase has much broader implications. Being a free people means that there’s a level of risk we must put up with on a daily basis that peons in totalitarian regimes might not be subjected to. We might get killed by a man who legally bought a gun, run over by a driver who legally bought alcohol, or blown out of the sky by terrorists who weren’t strip-searched before getting onto the plane.
Giving others the freedom to endanger us is the price each of us pays for our own freedom. Freedom isn’t free. We shouldn’t ban guns, we shouldn’t ban booze, and being sexually violated (either by being viewed in the buff or having one’s crotch groped) should not be a prerequisite for flying. Free people should avoid flying until the situation changes.
Posted by Apollo in Amer-I-Can!, Liberty and/or Security