This editorial in the Seattle PI is surprisingly good. I would have expected something in the PI to be more of the nature of “Give the government more money and power so it can protect us better.” It’s not that way at all. In fact he points out a change in passenger attitudes is a major deterrent to future hijackings:
A repetition of 9/11-style attacks became less likely, not because of increased airport security, but because of a change in passengers’ responses to airline hijackings.
And he correctly points out how we ended up with 100% loss of our 4th Amendment when we travel on commercial airlines:
How did we get to this abysmal state of affairs? Because even in times of crises — in fact, especially in times of crises — politics plagues government security efforts. Congress and the bureaucracy have to show the nervous public that they are doing something, even if those efforts make little sense. Sixty-five percent of the funds spent on domestic homeland security goes toward aviation security alone, leaving many fewer resources for measures at ports, borders and on mass transit.
The public should demand that the TSA be abolished and airport security be reprivatized. Perhaps it would be a first step toward ending the paranoia that has resulted in excessive emphasis on airport security to the exclusion of everything else.
I only partially agree with his conclusions. Before we reprivatized airport security we should research the alternatives.
Not only do we lose 100% of our 4th Amendment rights when we check in for a flight, we also lose 100% of our 2nd Amendment rights. This is one of the elephants in the living room too few people have the courage to face– that under 100% enforcement of the 2nd Amendment, there is a high probability the Jihadists would not have tried that bit in the first place, and if they had, there is a high probability they would have failed spectacularly.
If you can accept that, even partially, then what? Here comes the elephant– it means that our illustrious leaders, who took a certain Oath of Office, have violated said Oath, serving up planes and passengers as lambs to the slaughter, inadvertantly aiding and abetting the enemy, leading to thousands of deaths. Our nation’s Founders understood this formula over 200 years ago. We have to learn it over and over again.