By whom? Anybody that justifies the loss of a few basic freedoms for so called “national security.” Benjamin Franklin said it best: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
LewRockwell.com has an article by Nicholas Monahan, entitled Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife’s Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? Pompus, patronizing security officers, wild, inaccurate accusations, and confiscated scissors from a hygine bag. I’m glad those in charge of the safety of free people everywhere are so dedicated to their cause.
Watch out: your civil liberties are in jeopardy.
so…. anything posted on the internet is true? even if it were, thats one incident and that isnt about your civil liberties being taken from you by ‘the man.’ thats one asshole somewhere abusing his power… thats it, one person.
Not every case is reported, or written down and shared on the Internet. Statistics say only 1/3 of rapes are reported, for God’s sake. And a quick count shows six people at the airport that were involved in this guy’s problems.
Don’t let yourself think this is an isolated event. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.
not everyone in the article did something wrong though. using that logic, we could claim that all the other potential passengers were guilty too.
Side note: If a rape isnt reported, how do they know it happened? You cant rely on statistics based upon assumptions. I’m sure you’ve heard the oh so clever anecdote about assuming things.
Not everyone did something wrong, but the screener at the airport, the guard that searched the man’s wife, the three police officers that detained him, and the people he corresponded after the incident all acted in a way that I feel is unacceptable. I’m not sure what you mean about the other passengers.
I imagine that those stats on rape were gathered by asking many, many women if they had ever been raped, and if so, if they reported it. I don’t think the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network just pulls this kind of number out of their ass.
T$, I think that the overall point of the story is that our liberties are being taken away in the name of National Security. This story wasn’t just about abuse of power by one man. the courts back the employee because it was a “security issue”. What gives the employee a right to make his wife lift up her shirt in public? No amount of national security should, but it did.
Even if this story isn’t true (which I highly doubt), there are more cases where our civil liberties are are taken away. Just take a look at the “United States Patriot Act” passes by our wonderful government. Now the FBI can search and seize certain items without warrants! They can tap telephones that criminals *might* use and listen to them even when the criminals aren’t using them.
The terrorists of 9-11 succeeded. They have turned our country in to a xenophobic society and taken away our liberties, the very things our government was founded on, because of national security. I can think of other governments which have done this. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hell, even the US has done this in the past. During WWII, they put people of asian decent into concentration camps (see if you’ll read *that* in any american written history books), and they had a witch hunt for *communists* in america. Thank you J. Edgar Hoover.
But people thought we were past that. The United States has evolved to become benevolent, right? Ask that to any person of Middle Eastern origin who has been *detained for questioning* in a jail cell without given a chance to talk to their lawyer. And be careful when you’re at an airport because you might be detained because you *look shady*. But maybe you’ll find comfort in the fact that while the government is violating you, no one from the middle east will be able to.
/rant
-Matt
It is too often that I see such subjects oversimplified into a cut & dry arguments full of detestment for the system that surrounds our lives.
Matt, I agree with the final portion of your statement (for the most part). I’m more interested in why we are facing such sacrifices in the first place (I don’t mean outside influences invading our lives, I mean, why do we pursue national security?…think about it).
For what purpose is the system trying to obtain such abilities (wire tapping, lifting skirts, etc.), and why should Americans care?
Anyone can react negatively to a situation and yell ‘indecency!’ to the public. I can’t say that I can take any of the arguements put forth by Mr. Monahan to heart because of the way he handled the situation.
Can anyone rationalize the situation? Ben Franklin is a man from the 1700’s. He lived during colonial times, and the King of England was not capable of sneaking into a major public event with a devastating device and turn thousands of Americans into macaroni in such a short time frame, and with the effectiveness of terrorists today.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”? what if I were to tell you that our lives consisted of nothing but temporary safeties. A non-stop flow of them that seperate us from the filthy, ignorant scum that want nothing but to ruin our people (this excludes those filthy, ignorant scum running our country, fine sirs
).
If some guy at the airport terminal wants to grab my ass in the name of national security, then so be it. If I deny him that, then the next hundred guys with asses made of C4 are going to raise terror in your house, in your school, in your place of work.
How can we put a limit on the power of national security? Could you possibly put a limit on the amount of lives we want to preserve right now?
- Pete
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I didn’t want to spend all damn day in front of this comments screen, so if my words seem jumbled, it’s because they are highly summarized.
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dotdotdot: You Are Being Lied To i couldn’t agree more with adam. the situation that this article describes disgusts me.