Gooood morning!
Somewhere in my distant past, while in high school, I remember reading about the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Somewhere in the vast wasteland of dead and dying neurons that is my brain, I remembered something about searches and seizures, the need for warrants, probable cause. So, in a burst of fear as to where my freedoms were being taken, I checked out that venerable document, and this came up-
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That, my Friends, is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, a country I think still exists, but may be becoming one of those shimmering scenes one sees on a hot desert highway, a mirage of the country we once were.
A few days ago, an individual had the brashness to tell a TSA screener at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field that the screener better not touch “my junk” or he would file sexual assault charges. For his protestations, he was taken out of the airport, essentially by force, missing his flight. I’m certain that the federal government will not be reimbursing this young man for his ticket.
Something very, very ugly is happening in our country. We Americans have gradually, ever so quietly, surrendered our freedoms in order to be “safe”, as safe as a frog is in a pot of water in which the fire is slowly increased until the frog boils to death, all the while thinking it’s safe in the water.
Rather then dealing with the real issue, the real problem, we Americans are paying the price for terrorism as we slowly surrender the freedoms that were gained for us as a nation at great sacrifice and bloodshed.
Rather then screening passenger by the use of profiling, our out-of-control government is forcing us to submit ourselves to unreasonable searches WITHOUT WARRANTS OR REASONABLE CAUSE. We are forced to go through multiple screenings, forced to surrender common articles of use, in order to board an airplane. Little children are treated as possible criminals and patted down. We have become the target of the federal government, as well as the terrorists.
Folks, you’ve read my comments about our freedoms in the past. Maybe the young man at Lindbergh Field has sounded a trumpet call that is resonating throughout the country, a call that is finally awakening all of us to the true threat to our freedoms as Americans. That threat is our FEAR that is weakening us, allowing us to surrender, as a whimpering nation of pussies, the freedoms that our forefathers earned for us through their blood, their sweat and their lives.
So, what are we going to do as a nation? My suggestion is that we all stop flying for a while. Next, call your legislators and DEMAND that the TSA and Janet Napolitano be reined-in, consider firing Napolitano and putting a competent individual in charge. DEMAND that profiling be done, as the Israelis have been doing for decades. It works. Then, when a terrorist is captured, he is turned over to a military tribunal for swift, decisive justice.
Our freedoms are on the line. How much more are we, as an ostensibly “free” people, going to accept of this overt erosion of our personal and national freedoms? It’s time to fight back, time to get rational about how we are being trashed by the terrorists and our government.
Folks, it’s time that we tell the federal government to stop groping “our junk”, our freedoms.
