Those Who Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin, 1759

The TSA and America’s Turning Point

November 26, 2010

Hobbes - The recently-escalated battle between the American people and the TSA is far more important than it first appears. The final outcome of this argument will determine whether we still live in a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people,” or whether we have become a soft tyranny where our democratic forms of elections and representatives have been reduced to a meaningless veneer as in the old Soviet Union or Red China.

The Consent of the Governed

If America has a single founding principle, it is this: no government has any authority to take any action without the consent of the governed. Our Founding Fathers did not object to the principle of paying taxes per se; they objected strongly to the idea of being forced to pay taxes to a government where they had no input. Freedom’s cry was not “No taxation” then, and it isn’t now; it was “No taxation without representation.” The same goes for any other intrusive regulation.

The concept of “the consent of the governed” means more than just voting, however. A hundred years ago, Prohibition was enacted scrupulously according to democratic forms: Congress and then the required number of states passed a constitutional amendment allowing it, and then Congress and the President passed the Volstead Act enforcing it.

However, events quickly revealed that Prohibition did not have the consent of the governed, or at least a very sizable minority of them: whole sectors of American society insisted on having their booze no matter what the law said. The end result was vast wealth poured into crime syndicates; eventually Prohibition was repealed with the nation much the worse off for the experience.

There are many laws on the books today which do not really have the consent of the governed, but the government enforces them with a light touch so as not to provoke a backlash. Consider speed limits: almost everybody speeds, and the police almost never ticket people for going just a hair over. You usually have to be speeding by a good bit, and even then, getting caught is relatively rare. If the police seriously tried to ticket every single speeder, voters would demand that the limits be changed.

Or so we’ve always assumed – after all, government ultimately answers to the people, doesn’t it?

The Servant Becomes the Master

We are about to find out. There is no question that America is in the midst of a long-overdue revolt against intrusive government on many levels, but the TSA’s indignities and incompetence reach into every middle-class life. The molestations, porno-scans, and general harassment set off so many warning signals it’s a wonder anyone’s still flying at all.

The people have made their fury loudly know. The TSA’s response? Screw you!

Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said “if people want to travel by some other means,” they have that right – which is perfectly true but entirely beside the point. The TSA’s chief John Pistole was even more blunt, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Faced with growing public criticism of new airport security measures, the head of the Transportation Security Administration has a simple message: They’re necessary, and they’re going to stay for now. The good news for wary travelers is that the TSA has no plans to ratchet up airport screening even further to combat potential threats.

That’s the good news – that things aren’t going to get any worse, at least for now? Is this how public servants are supposed to treat the public who are their masters?

It’s clear that the TSA no longer considers the flying public to be their own higher authority; quite the contrary – they are subjects to be ordered around at a whim and made to do whatever the Powers That Be wish on whatever pretext comes to hand.

Let’s be clear: neither the new porno-scanners nor the fondling-patdown could have caught the Underwear Bomber, much less a terrorist like the one in Saudi Arabia who shoved the explosives up his butt. After nearly a decade, the TSA has yet to catch one single terrorist using any of their airport inspections – all the terrorists who’ve been caught, have been caught by intelligence agencies using surveillance and counterintelligence techniques, not goons with gloves and wands.

So, we have the public being forced to do something they very strongly do not want to do, for no reason at all; they are protesting loudly; and the government blithely blows them off. Something is very badly wrong here.

We cannot help but think of German poet Bertold Brecht’s arch observation about a Communist government’s dissatisfaction with its revolting people:

Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

Which of course is what the Left has tried to do with their repeated calls for illegal-alien amnesty and persistent voting fraud.

To sum up: we have an arm of the government openly and public committing sexual molestation on protesting innocent Americans, arrogantly proclaiming their intention to continue doing it no matter what, and merrily agreeing that the Constitution is a dead letter:

Nobody likes to have their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but truth of the matter is, we’re gonna have to do it.

What? Is that all it takes? A simple pronouncement of official regret for the passing of our founding documents, and then off we go into total tyranny?

This conflict with the TSA is merely a skirmish in the far larger ongoing war to determine if there are any limits whatsoever on Big Government, but it’s perhaps the most telling one yet.

If Americans will permit their wives, children, and themselves, to be sexually molested and openly humiliated in full view of the public by uniformed government operatives – in what still purports to be a representative democracy – then, indeed, they will tolerate anything, and there is little hope for the future.

This battle must be won, for to lose it means losing everything.

Miss America Sexually Molested by TSA

Generally, liberty and freedom are taken away over long periods of time, and the masses at large are little aware of this very dangerous slippery slope. That slope, however, has become much steeper and now is covered in ice. Just consider the time line of liberty destruction in the past ten years since 9/11. George W. Bush created by Executive Order 13228 the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council just 11 days after the 9/11 attacks. The Department of Homeland Security was established on November 25, 2002, by the Homeland Security Act of 2002; it was intended to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to "homeland security" into a single Cabinet agency. This monster has grown to become a massive bureaucracy that controls most every single aspect of our lives today. The now groping and child-molesting Transportation Security Agency (TSA) was moved from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security in March of 2003. This was the beginning of the end for all those U.S. citizens who want to have free movement in their own country. Now, one has to be baked in radiation, sexually assaulted, or both, by the cretins at the TSA in order to travel. - Gary D. Barnett, Martial Law in the Land of Confusion!, LewRockwell.com, April 23, 2011

April 27, 2011

Infowars.com - In the video below, the former beauty queen who held the Miss America title in 2003, Susie Castillo, says a TSA “screener” fondled her vagina during an intrusive pat-down.

Ms. Castillo was subjected to the groping after she refused to enter a naked body scanner at the airport in Dallas, Texas.

In late 2010, the TSA put in place new procedure guidelines instructing agents to use their “palms and fingers” to “probe” airline customer bodies for hidden weapons, including breasts and other private parts.

On April 15, CNN reported that people who complain about naked body scanners and intrusive airport pat-downs will be investigated as terrorists and criminals.

Lawmakers around the country have introduced legislation designed to rollback the pat-downs after the public and airline employees voiced complaints. In March, legislation was introduced into the Texas House of Representatives directly challenging the authority of the TSA in airports within the state and specifically aimed at criminalizing the use of naked body scanners and enhanced pat-downs.

In November of 2010, chief deputy DA and incoming DA of San Mateo County Steve Wagstaffe told the Alex Jones Show his office will prosecute TSA employees who engage in lewd and lascivious behavior while conducting pat-downs at the San Francisco International Airport. Wagstaffe told Alex Jones that county police will be sent into the San Francisco International Airport. If they witness TSA employees engaged in criminal conduct, they will make arrests and the DA’s office will prosecute.

In January, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura launched a lawsuit against the TSA for subjecting him to humiliating pat-downs as he traveled for his work as the host of the popular TruTV show Conspiracy Theory. Ventura said that he would “no longer be forced by the TSA to prove he is not a criminal or terrorist.”

Earlier this week, Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, said the TSA had the authority to conduct an intrusive pat-down on a six year old girl.

“Parts of the pat down, in another setting, clearly constituted the kind of inappropriate touching that, if done by anyone else, would have resulted in charges of child abuse and sexual assault. The pat down even caused the little girl to cry, her parents later said in televised interviews,” writes J. D. Heyes.

In November, an Alex Jones employee related her experience with the TSA in Denver. Her children were subjected to the intrusive pat-down procedure.

Castillo is currently a spokeswoman for Neutrogena and has appeared on a number of television shows, including the ABC Family reality television series, America’s Prom Queen.

She also held the title of Miss Massachusetts Teen USA in 1998.

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