Don’t Tread on Me, but Grope me if You Must
November 14th, 2010The Price of Dignity: One Boarding Pass
Back when George Bush was President, it was a gigantic invasion of our civil rights when the TSA asked us to take off our shoes. At least that’s what many prominent liberals told us. Then Obama got elected, and Jim Carville said it was okay with him if the TSA measured his genitals. Not that there is a double standard, mind you.
I used to make fun of the people who complained about taking their shoes off at airports. No one really feels violated when forced to remove his or her shoes. The fuss was actually about George Bush and the left’s irrational hatred of him. But now screeners take naked pictures of us, squeeze women’s breasts, and feel our genitals with the palms of their hands. They do it to men, boys, old ladies and little girls. In front of the general public.
That’s different.
This is the kind of thing the Bill of Rights was written to prevent. If you think otherwise, you are probably very stupid. At best, you are ignorant of history. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to prevent government excesses. We were fleeing British tyranny, and the crown had a long record of torturing, confiscating property, performing unreasonable searches, prosecuting people without trials, and so on. We wanted to prevent our government from doing these things to us, so we drafted the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.
We didn’t write them so they only applied to life-threatening government action. We included minor inconveniences. If you were to write a trivial blog post the government didn’t like, and the government were to make you delete it, that would be a minor inconvenience. Such governmental action is absolutely illegal, however. The cops can’t pull random cars over for fifteen seconds each and search their glove compartments without warrants, even if it might save lives. They can’t come to your house and take fifty cents from your piggy bank, without a legal basis. If you and ten friends are hanging out at the mall, having a good time, the cops can’t come and tell you to disperse. Small things. Completely illegal.
The Bill of Rights was not written just to keep you from being thrown in jail or executed or impoverished. It was also written to force the government to be polite. That is no exaggeration. So when the government demands the right to photograph or feel your vagina or scrotum, even for a few seconds, it ought to have a very good reason. And there is considerable doubt as to whether the TSA has good reasons for doing these things. The Israelis don’t do them, and their air safety record is second to none.
The sad truth is that it’s better for a few hundred people to die in midair explosions than for an entire nation to submit to sexual abuse. If that sounds crazy, think about the things our soldiers die for all the time. They die so we can have blogs. They die so we can have pornography. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have died to protect things that seem relatively trivial. And we are no better than our soldiers. We ought to be willing to face the same risks they face, in order to protect basic civil liberties. In fact, by refusing to be photographed naked and groped, we would face a much smaller risk, or no risk at all (judging by Israel’s experience), since soldiers are much more likely to be harmed than civilians, even in an atmosphere of terrorism. We don’t have to be nearly as brave as our soldiers. We just have to have a little tiny bit of bravery. But we apparently don’t have it.
We don’t have the advantage our ancestors had. We have no memory of a government that forced us to board soldiers in our homes or punished people by drawing and quartering. We don’t recall what it was like to live under the Sedition Act. So the new incursions on our liberty don’t remind us of a painful past. No! To many of us, they seem innovative! Clever! Rational!
It would be no different if we were asked to give up other liberties. If we gave up the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure, hundreds of thousands of violent criminals would be jailed within a year. Our streets would be safer; there is no doubt about it. If we gave up the Sixth Amendment right to confront our accusers, all sorts of terrified crime victims would be encouraged to come forward, and again, prosecution rates would soar. If we reduced defendants’ rights across the board, a dramatic national cleansing would result. The bodies of dead children would be recovered. Fortunes would be restored to crime victims. Adults kidnapped as children would meet their real parents for the first time.
You can almost always get something very good by giving up something precious. So what? Who wants to live like that? If that’s how we feel, why not go ahead and turn our military cemeteries into public urinals? What did we spend those lives for?
I am writing this because I just read about John Tyner’s TSA experience. He refused to have his genitals grabbed by TSA screeners, and they forced him to miss a flight. They even manufactured a bogus lawsuit threat, ordering him to leave the airport and then telling him he would be fined and sued if he obeyed. They acted the way threatened bureaucrats always act. The way the Founding Fathers had seen colonial bureaucrats act, prior to the Constitutional Congress.
One commenter on Tyner’s blog said he was making a big fuss over a brief grope. Here is what another commenter said: “Anonymous 3:22: it probably seemed excessive for Rosa Parks to risk arrest over a bus seat.”
Exactly. I guarantee you, there were people who said Rosa Parks was crazy. All she had to do was sit in the back of the bus. She would have arrived at her destination at the same time as the white people up front. She wasn’t even required to let a stranger feel her breasts. But she was right. Dignity matters. A good deal of the Bill of Rights exists purely to protect our dignity. And dignity is exactly what we gave up when we agreed to be photographed naked and allow TSA agents to handle our children’s crotches.
Ask yourself if George Washington would have let the TSA feel up Martha.
Liberals like to tell us “slippery slope” arguments are nonsense, but of course, that’s wrong. The Jews in Germany and Austria lost their rights incrementally. We went from a modest Social Security system to a bankrupt socialist ponzi scheme incrementally. The “slippery slope” concept exists because it has been proven right, time and again. We are seeing it now, in our airports. If you will let a stranger palm your wife’s crotch, what exactly would it take to offend you?
Just blow me up. Really. Kill me. Today. How bad can death be? I am not that scared of it. I ride motorcycles. I’ve flown in private planes. The other day I ate tomato sauce from a dubious can, just because I didn’t want to drive to the store. I’m not that scared of death. A low risk of death is preferable to certain repeated humiliation.
If you think things are bad now, wait until the first rectum bomb goes off on a plane. I guarantee you, most Americans will gladly submit to random rectal exams. When we reach that point, consider me grounded. Eventually, you have to put a firm price on your dignity. I don’t like the idea of being molested just so I can have a short vacation, and when they reach the stage where they’re looking inside anuses and vaginas, there will be no destination I consider sufficiently tempting. Seriously, if I offered you a ticket to California in exchange for letting me sodomize you, would you go for it?
I’ve always been like this. When I was in college, I thought fraternities were disgusting because they made young men strip naked and perform in gay rites.
I can’t wait to see what the next “necessary” violation will be. I don’t think Americans have the guts to stand up to the TSA, so I think the abusive searches will continue, and that will encourage the government, and they’ll go ahead and make things worse.
John Tyner is an inspiration. I don’t have a tenth of the character he has. People like John Tyner are our only hope of an acceptable quality of life in the future. Let the commenters criticize him. Capos criticized people who resisted the Nazis, and history passed judgment. History will be very kind to our John Tyners. It always has.
November 14th, 2010 at 3:56 PM
It seems that the greater the need for speed in our lives, the lesss inclined we are as a nation to resist the little invasions of our privacy in order to “keep us safe.”
I won’t fly anymore except on privately owned aircraft.
November 14th, 2010 at 4:17 PM
Well, maybe you’re not scared of death. I’m not either. But the vast majority of Americans are either completely faithless, or phoning it in on Sunday mornings, and they are really, really scared of death. Death is the end, and we’d rather not, thanks. It’s the one thing to be avoided, and we (by “we”, I mean “they”) Americans will endure absolutely any insult to our persons, so long as we can pretend we are safe. We are, after all, living in a world where toys are recalled on a daily basis because some kid threw his toy and got cut on the fragments. We’re pathetic.
November 14th, 2010 at 7:32 PM
Can you imagine the screaming that would come from the left if the TSA followed the Israeli standards of picking out the passengers to question when boarding a plane? The TSA would rather frisk a seventy year old Swedish grandmother than anyone remotely resembling a muslim. CAIR is more feared than your standard American citizen.
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I gave up flying years ago. One of the few smart things I’ve done.
November 14th, 2010 at 7:48 PM
I’m not real big on being irradiated repeatedly. If I had small children no way would they get “scanned” every dose makes your odds of cancer greater and the younger you are more cell damage.
I am not afraid to drive long distances, sure its a pain and takes longer but it can also be fun if you get off the beaten path a little ways.
The pilots are complaining for the same reason, they spend enough time at altitude getting extra exposure without getting another dose every time they board a plane.
After these idiots finish off the dollar no one will have enough wealth to fly even if they have reason to.
Good post Steve.
November 15th, 2010 at 1:46 PM
The rectal bomb didn’t work out when used against the Saudi princeling, outside of getting his kaffiyeh all icky. But yeah, everyone’s all for invasive searches until it’s themselves being invaded. I considered taking a plane recently – I decided I’d rather drive for 12 hours rather than get groped.
November 15th, 2010 at 2:18 PM
I respectfully disagree. I am not a frequent flyer, but I find myself on an airplane about every month or so and I really couldn’t care less about security people seeing me naked *if* it results in superior security. I have never felt “sexually abused.” Also, I was under the impression that El Al (the Israeli airline) has fairly extreme security measures?
November 15th, 2010 at 2:24 PM
1. You’re making a decision for other people; you have no right to decide whether other people should have their privacy invaded, simply because you don’t mind. You’re completely sidestepping the fundamental issue.
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2. You implicitly admit you don’t know anything about El Al security. Why even bring it up, then? El Al gives special attention to Muslims, which is exactly what we should be doing.
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3. You don’t even address the issue of genital groping. Picture a TSA agent holding your mother’s genitals, or your daughter’s, in a cupped hand. Is that okay with you?
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4. How far would you go to get a tiny added measure of safety? Can the TSA run a colonscope up your behind? Can they insert instruments in your genitals? Where do you draw the line? If you’re willing to have your orifices violated, does that mean you have standing to say other people should be forced to accept the same treatment?
November 15th, 2010 at 2:44 PM
*if* it results in superior security
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It doesn’t. This stuff is “security theater”. There are obvious ways to defeat the system. See “rectum bomb”, above.
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El Al’s security is much more effective, and less invasive of privacy. Basically, they hire lots of smart people instead of relying on technology. They interview all their passengers; sniff for explosives; decompress luggage before loading; and they put armed plainclothes marshals on their flights. It’s expensive and inconvenient, but it works without disrespecting the customer.
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I think Steve is unduly pessimistic about Americans’ willingness to put up with invasive, ineffectual “security” measures. There’s a poll on Reuters.com today, where 96% of respondents say they just won’t fly anymore. Pilots are also beginning to put up organized resistance. This is without cavity searches.
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Some of the commenters to that Reuters thing think these new “security” innovations are a conspiracy to destroy the airline industry. If so, it may succeed. But the political backlash will be huge, perhaps sufficient to eliminate the TSA as we know it. I for one would like to see airlines handle their own security along El Al lines.
November 15th, 2010 at 2:51 PM
Great post, Steve. I’m linking to it.
My sisters, nieces and I had lunch today and this was a big part of our discussion. It is outrageous. One of the nieces is flying back to Nashville tomorrow, we’ll see how her trip and inspection was. One of the other nieces wears an insulin pump and had extreme inspection maneuvers because of it last month before the new inspections were supposedly on line. I hope we are not sheep being led to the slaughter.
November 15th, 2010 at 3:06 PM
My comment wasn’t really meant to be comprehensive. I have read your blog on and off for years and I enjoy hearing your perspective regarding a variety of issues.
1) I am not trying to decide for other people. I just strongly disagree with your sexual abuse/dying in midair evaluation.
2) I brought up El Al because I was curious. I am an air safety enthusiast and it seems like El Al has some fairly effective procedures.
3) I am am definitely not in favor of unnecessary groping, but I am not really clear when genital groping became the norm?
November 15th, 2010 at 3:14 PM
Next time I fly I’m thinking about demanding to be hand searched and then further demand that I get to pick who does the dirty deed.
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Then I will choose the best looking, youngest girl in the TSA crowd and stare at her lewdly while they explain that I can’t pick my screener.
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I fly infrequently these days, often one way and often buying the ticket last minute and thus I’ve been on the highest level of “enhanced” screening for ten years now.
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I’ve just gotten used to it but find that some quiet forms of protest still can be enacted without getting locked up or thrown out of the airport.
November 15th, 2010 at 3:33 PM
I see I missed #4. I’m clearly in over my head. I was mostly just attempting to indicate that I am cognizant of the personal freedom vs safety continuum and airport security is an area that I am willing to give up more freedom to get more safety. I am all for more effective security measures, and not “security theater.” And, this is merely my opinion, having no more standing than any other opinion. Finally, wow. Let’s all hope that colonoscopies don’t become part of the equation.
November 15th, 2010 at 3:36 PM
I don’t mean to seem rude. I think people need a good, loud wake-up call. We’re like the frog in the famous pot of warm water, dozing off as the heat rises to boiling.
November 15th, 2010 at 4:08 PM
I’ve have flown a couple times with my wife and two daughters in the past, but now that I have to decide between someone either seeing them nude or being fondled, it seems extremely unlikely that we will do it again.
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I’m not all that worried about a TSA screener enjoying running me through the process (those kind of sicko’s are very few and far between), but as a husband and father, I am responsible for protecting the honor of my wife and teen daughters. Men used to understand these things from a very early age, and were willing to go to war over the issue.
November 15th, 2010 at 6:08 PM
Leftists are so concerned about what Muslims think about everything. How come it never occurred to them to wonder about what they think of us letting people grope our citizens and look at them naked? Also, are Muslim women in burkas forced to go through this, or can the usual Muslim hysterical theater and protests by CAIR and so on get them waved through with only a slight wanding?
In any case, I never liked flying when none of this was in place. If I can’t drive or take a train, I’m not going there.
November 15th, 2010 at 6:09 PM
Left Detroit for Florida last Thursday. Checked my pistol, asked the clerk: shouldn’t she call TSA over? No. just go through security. Got the metal scanner as I always had. Down at the gate I get paged back. TSA wanted the keys. Of course they did. Back through security again, this time: the scanner. Asked why, it’s random.
Flew home today, scanned and groped. Missed a dime in my pocket.
A dime.
Let us all carry our guns, and I’ll feel a lot more secure.
I’ll be driving, when possible, from now on.
November 16th, 2010 at 7:58 AM
Steve, This may be your best post ever. Beautifully written and clearly argued. As a direct descent of George Mason, I have always believed The Bill Of Rights is the bedrock of our freedom. Thank you.
November 16th, 2010 at 8:04 AM
Sorry about the typo. Old brain, old eyes.