LITTLE ROCK — That shrill, screeching sound is the anguished squeal of outraged airline passengers experiencing the rigorous new pat-downs demanded by the Transportation Security Administration.
What a bunch of whiners!
Do these narcissistic complainers not understand that we are at war? The enemy is international terrorism. These sinister forces are trying to destroy our American way of life. If you are not willing to concede some individual vanity, decency and your own little fantasy of self-worth, maybe you should just move.
Unless Americans humbly subject themselves to necessarily uncomfortable physical inspections, the terrorists win. Ultimately, this means you may someday forfeit your God-given right to produce income and buy loads of stuff you cannot afford. Living as an obedient consumer is, as we all know, the highest American virtue.
Let us be completely honest. If privacy is all that gosh-darned important to that insignificant bunch of incessant complainers, they would have put up a stink back when mandatory drug testing for students in public schools was first proposed. Fortunately, thanks to this slightly dehumanizing but entirely necessary policy, younger people are a lot more willing to unquestioningly obey the government.
We must view the momentary howling of a few overly scrupulous crackpots as an unfortunate and out of-place trend more deserving of pity than contempt. Luckily, one day soon the United States of America will be handed over to a new and infinitely more docile generation that has been properly conditioned to urinate on command.
Not desiring to worsen any intergenerational conflict, it must be fairly observed that many working people of a slightly more advanced age also have submitted themselves to the required drug screen with the meekness expected of a compliant citizen, so itis rather late in the game for a trifling band of noisy modesty freaks to decide all of a sudden that they object to a little bureaucratic invasiveness.
If we are going to show these awful international terrorists a thing or two, it will be necessary for every one of us to forgo the conventional and somewhat outmoded ideas of personal decency. Besides, the awkward sensation of a properly administered TSA inspection only lasts a brief embarrassing moment and nobody really gets hurt. What’s the big deal?
The Founders knew what they were doing when they wrote that Second Amendment. Everybody ought to have as many guns as he wants and put evildoers to flight whenever necessary, but whoever dreamed up that Fourth Amendment must have been suffering a severe case of cerebral indigestion.
Of course, in the1700s privacy probably seemed like a good idea. Some of the folks back then had a rough time with the British breaking into their homes and taking personal papers. But we do not have that problem of a snoopy bureaucracy these days. If the government is watching somebody, there must be a pretty doggone good reason.
And there it is, the Founders were visionaries and we love them all to pieces. They were daydreamers and set the course for this mighty nation, but we should not fall into the dangerous trap of ancestor worship. That pesky Fourth Amendment requires some closer scrutiny.
In theory, it sounds like a really cool idea that ordinary people should be “secure in their persons, houses,papers, and effects.” The Framers, bless their hearts, did not have to deal with the likes of Osama bin Laden. All that cumbersome legal jargon about “warrants,” “oaths” and “probable cause” is simply out of place in our fast-moving world.
It is somewhat sad that there are still some people who are so unenlightened and misinformed as to believe that certain so-called rights are set in stone and may never be taken away. Listen, if it means defeating freedom-hating terrorists, good Americans should be willing to give up every single one of those so-called rights that the clockstoppers get so hung up on.
If there were a blackboard around this place, explaining these things would be a whole lot easier. For all those who still cling to their antiquated misconceptions of individual liberty, let us conduct a critical examination of the text.
The key operative phrase of the Fourth Amendment is “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Yes, that is precisely what we are to be protected against. Did you get it? The essential qualifier is “unreasonable.” Now seriously, people, considering that weare in a life-and-death struggle with international terrorists, what demand of government could ever possibly be resisted by some mere citizen as being unreasonable? Case closed.
The uncomfortable truth is that Americans have become soft and self indulgent. As a people, we have had it too easy for way too long, and the time has finally come for the pampered middle class to give a little for the home team. If some frisky TSA screener says, “Jump,” all any patriotic American needs to ask is “How high?” -
Free-lance columnist Pat Lynch has been a radio broadcaster in Central Arkansas for more than 20 years.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 11/22/2010