GORHAM – How far is our government willing to go to “protect” us from airline terrorists? What will be next after digital strip searches? Body cavity searches?

Our government is admitting the terrorists have won. The response creates just as much fear and anxiety as a terrorist attack, without the effort of an actual attack. Our government is doing the work of terrorists for them, making people afraid! That is just plain stupid of us.

It’s as if TSA took a few pages out of the classical totalitarian government manual for how to pacify and suppress the population of an occupied country: Make the people wait in long lines at checkpoints and humiliate them, while you tell them it’s all for their own safety. Didn’t the Nazis do that? The Soviets?

This is how you cultivate a nation of sheep who will submit to any indignity or insult to their civil liberties. This is not a healthy thing to do to America.

What will be the cost to the American spirit? Some people interviewed in airport lines acquiesce too easily to infringement of their Constitutional right to privacy. Will they be less willing to stand up to government wrongdoing and defend the U.S. Constitution in future?

Are Americans learning to be more risk-averse, more passive? What will happen to capitalism if nobody is left willing to take a risk? Will we have fewer entrepreneurs in the future?

Are we training risk-taking out of human nature when we require Americans to submit to the indignity of backscatter X-rays or intrusive pat-downs at airports? Sheep don’t make good capitalists.

Reputable medical doctors will tell you there is no safe level of radiation exposure. None. Do people who have been the victims of sexual molestation deserve to be treated in this degrading manner? What impact does it have on children to be molested by TSA uniforms? Or see their parents abused in this manner?

Will children respect their parents if the government does not? Will children trust their parents if they fail to protect them from TSA molesters?

An American is more likely to be killed driving to the grocery store than by a terrorist attack. If TSA wants to make travel safe, they could start by taking all cars off the nation’s highways. That makes about as much sense as what TSA is doing now at airports.

TSA officials assert this is necessary to protect airline passengers. I question their temperament and their judgment for making such statements. It is not necessary to terrorize the American people to make us safe. That is an overzealous and unreasonable opinion, not fact. The Israelis don’t do it, and they have some experience with terrorists.

Competent police work to ascertain real threats, more appropriate interview screening to detect suspicious behavior of travelers, and reasonable vigilance are more effective ways to deal with the possibility of terrorism than mindless subjugation of air travelers to invasions of their persons.

As a person who has dedicated his life to public service, I find it totally inappropriate and unacceptable for our government to do this to its citizens.

Would James Madison, Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry have submitted to such intrusions? Or, if the Declaration of Independence means what it says, would they have revolted against such a government?

We have a choice between becoming a nation of sheep or remaining a nation of people who will defend the U.S. Constitution and advance capitalism. Which will we choose? Enough is enough. Let’s stop the madness, already.

– Special to The Press Herald

 

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