“I’m not in agreement with the pat-downs, but I don’t think this is the day – before the holidays – when everbody’s travelling that we need to make our stand,” “one man travelling out of Detroit” told CBS Radio News’ Dan Raviv.
Relievedly, CBS Radio News was reporting Wednesday afternoon that self-righteous hi-jinks were not “gumming” up smooth travel.
Dear libertarian activists: that “man travelling from Detroit” is on our side! However, he still wants to get to see his family over this stressful travel holiday without hassles exacerbated by the Transportation Safety Administration’s already cumbersome – and invasive – new security full body scan and pat-down procedures.
(Detroit fliers are arguably more used to cutting edge security hassles. This blogger first had to remove his shoes in far off Midwestern Detroit – but not at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, mere miles from 9/11
targets, on another leg of the trip – as early as 2002. I wondered aloud back then if the Detroit area’s prominent Arab-American population played a role in the more restrictive measures.)
With media reports that “outrage” over the new procedure is only the whining of a disgruntled rump and establishment opinion handing down scoldings from newspaper editorial boards, this sort of political puppet show walks right into the cynical anti-libertarian line promulgated by commentators who care more about bashing small government ideas than defending civil liberty, as liberals generally claim to – and one, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, admirably calls their bluff. To these snarks, this hubbub is either just another unjustifiable grievance of racist “teabaggers” or mendacious “astroturf” fabrication from the tentacles of the sinister “Kochtopus.” The result is a genuine concern over violation of American civil liberty can be dismissed by self-styled mainstream thinkers as ravings from the fringe, and our liberties slide even further away from us.
Besides, airline security line slowdowns smack of the “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” ethos that is anything but “live and let live.”
Liberty lovers, let the “man travelling from Detroit” catch his flight and see his loved ones. Don’t punish the good guys for the terrorism alarmists power grabs. That’s not freedom fighting worth give thanks for, now, is it?
