Thread: Time to junk Pistole

Time to junk Pistole
By David Keene - 11/22/10 05:07 PM ET

The public reaction to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) overreach and lack of even minimal sensitivity should stand as a lesson to those who believe the government always knows best and think Americans are a malleable bunch who will ultimately do as they are told.

George Will, echoing the late William F. Buckley Jr., got it right. We do live in a society in which too many of us are willing to accept just about any indignity without protest. But as the boys and girls at TSA are learning, our acquiescence in the outrageous has its limits.

At one level, the argument being made by TSA in favor of increasingly intrusive searches at our airports is the same we’ve heard every time anyone has dared since 9/11 to suggest that our protectors ought to be sensitive to constitutional rights and the differences in the way free and totalitarian states go about the task of protecting themselves. We are told that since we are in the midst of a war with an enemy that has little respect for human life, we must do everything we can to protect ourselves and the American homeland; that security must of necessity trump traditionally guaranteed rights and that those who disagree simply don’t understand the dangers we face.

Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has been much maligned, but put the challenge we face in better perspective than anyone since when he observed just a few days after braving the fire and smoke enveloping the Pentagon on 9/11 that if, in response to the attacks of our enemies, we give up those freedoms that are uniquely American, we will have lost. Since then we have been gradually doing just that, and justifying every alteration in the way we live our lives in the name of “national security.â€

Interesting background info.